Wesley Castle 





library of congress. 

Chap. KL 3 Copyright No. 

.Shelf. ..W-K I V 


UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 


























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The VI CT PRIES of 


WESLEY CASTLE 


B Y 

C> W. WINCHESTER, D. D. 

•i 


Author of ‘‘The Gospel Kodak abroad ” and 
“ The Wells of Salvation.” 


BUFFALO: 

The Christian Literature Company. 
1900. 

L ' 


y oi Co rut”*** 

) ' Whti KkcLtED 

NOV 8 1900 

Copyright entry 

UtV, VV ^ao * 

ti^.CV'^-b.^A.b.. 

SECOND COPY, 

fiMvefflrt (o 

ORDER O'V’iSION, 

1 MOV 19 land 


V v 


Copyright, J900, by C. W. Winchester. 


To My Wife, 

who has been my most sympathetic helpmeet and wise 
counselor in all my ministry, 

THIS VOLUME 

IS LOVINGLY INSCRIBED. 
















PREFACE. 


“*JpHE Victories of Wesley Castle,” exactly as it now 
appears, was given by the author, a chapter at a 
time, to his Sunday evening congregation, in the First Method- 
ist Episcopal Church, of Wellsville, N. Y., in the Summer 
of 1900. It awakened a good degree of interest; and, it is 
believed, was productive of much spiritual profit to the many 
who heard it. It is now offered to the public in the humble 
faith that it will benefit those who honor it with a perusal. 

In form and setting, the book is a fiction. But its sub- 
stance is solid fact, from beginning to end. The hero is a 
composite character, adorned with some ideal excellences. 
No one person ever had all the experiences of Wesley Castle; 
but, with few exceptions, they are all the real experiences of 
real men. His inner spiritual conflicts and victories are a 
part of the life history of a man well-known to the author, 
for whom God has done exactly what the story says he did 
for the hero. Nearly all the characters are real persons, 
known to the author* Notably so are Carter and Chester 
Reynolds and the Osgoods and Sam Hooker. 

As the author does not wish to be accused of exaggera- 
tion, in this first attempt at story-telling, he wishes it under- 
stood that those incidents in the narrative which seem most 
overdrawn are true to the very letter. If it is thought that 
5 


such revivals as are here described never were, the answer is, 
THEY WOULD BE COMMON OCCURRENCES, IF THE CHURCH 
WOULD LIVE UP TO THE PENTECOSTAL STANDARD. 

The book goes out with the earnest prayer of the author 
that the Holy Spirit will use it to the conversion and sanctifi- 
cation of many souls. 

CHARLES WESLEY WINCHESTER. 

Wellsville, N. Y., September 10, 1900. 


CONTENTS.. 


1. 

The Voice Behind the Chair, 

9 

II. 

The Death of Self, 

26 

III. 

Abundant Life After Death, 

46 

IV. 

Called to Endure Hardness, 

65 

V. 

Fully Armed and Equipped, 

85 

VI. 

The Shock of Battle, 

106 

VII. 

Love Suflfereth Long, and is Kind, 

127 

VIII. 

Love Believeth all Things, 

148 

IX. 

The Sharp, Two-Edged Sword, 

166 

X. 

The Wingless Victory, . 

185 


7 



I. 

The Voice Behind the Chair. 

It was a bright, beautiful afternoon in the latter part 
of the month of May. The air was redolent with the 
odor of flowers and resonant with the singing of birds 
and the buzzing of bees. Wesley Castle was sitting in 
his room, Humber 20, in the North Dormitory of Mount 
Caesar College. He had just returned from dining in 
the Chapter House of the Psi TJpsilon Kappa Fraternity, 
and from walking around the twenty-acre college cam- 
pus. Before him was the labor of getting ready for the 
morrow’s recitations. On the table were scattered the 
books from which his lessons were to be learned. He 
must translate twenty pages of Sophocles’ Oedipus 
Tyrannus (that was not a long lesson, for the class was 
reviewing the work); he must refresh his mind on two 
chapters of Butler’s Analogy; he must get ready to 
answer any question the professor might take a notion to 
ask anywhere in the first five chapters of somebody’s 
Psychology; and he must get on the end of his tongue, 
so that it could roll off as smoothly as molasses from a 
faucet, when Prof. Dry-as-dust should turn the mental 
spigot, a demonstration of the method of calculating an 
eclipse of the sun. All this he had to do before supper, 
as he had a social engagement at half past seven, and 
recitations would begin the next morning at eight. He 
did not feel much like work. The day was too warm and 
pleasant to be shut up in that old stone prison-like build- 
ing. And he was dull and sleepy from a mid-night in- 
itiation at the Psi TJpsilon Kappa Chapter House. In- 
stead of setting himself immediately to his task, he threw 
9 


The Victories of Wesley Castle. 

himself into his rocking chair, put his heels in the win- 
dow-seat and settled back for a doze. 

Wesley Castle was a member of the senior class in 
Mount Caesar College. He was expecting to graduate, 
with the degree of A. B., on the eleventh day of July. 
It was the judgment of the entire faculty that the Insti- 
tution had never sent forth from its halls a finer young 
man than he. In scholarship he stood at the head of his 
class, with a wide distance between him and the second 
man. He excelled in every branch of study. But his 
favorite subject was the ancient languages. It was a 
common remark in the college that Castle knew the 
Greek grammar by heart; that he never got stuck on a 
translation; and that he was the finest Greek under- 
graduate that ever trod the campus of Mount Caesar 
College. In moral character he stood one hundred on a 
scale of one hundred, every time. He had the perfect 
confidence of all his teachers and all his fellow students. 
He had never been caught in any mean, or doubtful, 
act, and no suspicion of any such thing had ever been 
entertained concerning him. And yet there was noth- 
ing slow, or dull, or stupid about him. He was full of 
innocent fun, and could laugh as loud and crack a joke 
as skillfully as any other fellow on the hill. Although 
he was as frank as Joseph, and as upright as Daniel, he 
was universally popular. Everybody liked Wesley Cas- 
tle ; and those who knew him best held him in the great- 
est admiration and affection. 

Story-tellers are accused of exaggeration in describing 
their heroes and heroines. Nevertheless the truth must 
be told about Wesley Castle. Physically he was as near 
perfection as men often get. He was exactly six feet 
tall, in his stockings. He weighed about one hundred 
10 


The Voice Behind the Chair. 

and eighty pounds. He was not stout, but very muscu- 
lar. He belonged to a large-limbed and athletic family. 
His father was but an ordinary man in that respect, 
but his grand-father had been a veritable giant, in 
strength, the wonder of many counties. This youth 
seemed to have inherited his grand-sire’s physical power ; 
and he had so developed and trained it, by four years’ 
rigorous drill in the college gymnasium, and on the 
athletic field, that he had the reputation of being the 
best athlete, as well as the finest scholar, that Mount 
Caesar had ever produced. He never played foot-ball, 
because he pronounced it barbarous. But in all the 
harmless sports of college athletics he easily carried off 
all the prizes. He had the eye of an eagle (no spectacles 
ever sat astride his nose); the lungs of a race horse; the 
heart of a lion; and the muscles of a centaur. If any 
one asks how he looked, the answer is : He had pleasant, 
though, perhaps, not handsome, features; gray eyes; 
heavy, auburn hair; and beardless face. 

How old was he? When our story begins he was a 
few weeks under twenty-four years. A little old for a 
man in college. But he was delayed in beginning his 
course by the narrow means of his father, which com- 
pelled him to linger on the way, teaching school to pay 
his bills. 

Viewed from the stand-point of literary and intel- 
lectual accomplishments, Castle was weakest as a writer 
and speaker. It is a strange thing to say — and yet it is 
true — that the scholar and athlete was timid on the 
platform, and took no pleasure in oratory, and, conse- 
quently, little in the production of essays and orations. 
And yet, on one occasion, just after the long vacation, 
which he had spent in reading the writings of that great 
11 


The Victories of Wesley Castle. 

French author, Victor Hugo, imbibing, but not imitat- 
ing, bis peculiar style, be astonished the whole college 
with an oration of great brilliancy, delivered with the 
grace and power of a master. Still be would have de- 
clared that be was not a speaker, and never could become 
one. 

What was Wesley Castle religiously? That is the 
most important question that can be asked concerning 
any human being. He was a firm believer in the Bible 
and the divinity of the Christian religion. His mental 
and moral make-up was such that be was never tempted 
to infidelity, and it would have been well-nigh impossible 
for him to have become an unbeliever. His ancestor, 
in the eighth generation, John Castle, came to Hew 
England, from old England, in the year 1635, and settled 
near the city, or village, of Boston. He fled from the 
old country to escape religious persecution, under the 
reign of Charles I. His descendants, like himself, for 
three generations, belonged to what was called “the 
Standing Order.” It was the Congregational Church. 
It was the only Church known to the law. Everybody 
had to pay taxes for its support. Ho one could vote at 
town-meeting who was not a church-member. And the 
town-meeting elected the pastor and all church officials. 
Benjamin Castle, the great-great-grand-son of John and 
great-grand-father of our hero, removed to the State of 
Hew Hampshire, shortly after the Ke volutionary War. 
There he became a Methodist, under the preaching of 
the earliest itinerants who penetrated to that northern 
wilderness. Bishop Asbury often slept under the roof 
of his log cabin, and preached to the settlers who gath- 
ered, from far and near, in his barn. Benjamin had a 
son and a grand-son who bore his name, and imbibed 
12 


The Voice Behind the Chair. 

his religious convictions. So our hero was a birth-right 
Methodist. He began to attend Methodist Sunday 
school and Methodist preaching so early in life that he 
could never remember the first time. 

Wesley grew toward manhood with a strong religious 
nature. Though he was not born holy, he was bom with 
something in his soul which compelled him to think on 
religious things. From a very little child he never went 
to bed without kneeling in prayer in the room where he 
slept. He was reading the Bible through by course the 
twelfth time when he entered college. As early as the 
age of ten he was powerfully convicted of sin. Though 
he had never committed any outrageous sin, it seemed to 
him that he was the greatest sinner in the world. His 
greatest defect of character was a fiery temper, which 
often got the better of his will and threw him into 
violent volcanic eruptions. These were always brief, 
and were followed by longer periods of bitter remorse. 
This, and the ever-present feeling that he was a sinner, 
gave him many sleepless nights and caused him unspeak- 
able sorrow. Scores of times, during those four dread- 
ful years, he went to his room at night, not daring to go 
to sleep lest he should wake up among the lost. Often 
he would throw himself upon the outside of the bed, in 
his clothing, determined that he would not go to sleep. 
But, in a few minutes, overpowering slumber would 
seize him and hold him captive till morning. Then he 
would fall on his knees and thank a merciful God that 
he was alive and ouo of perdition, and make a solemn 
vow that he would do right and be right that day. But, 
alas, the next night would be like the one before; and his 
broken vows would be repeated, with tears and sobs of 
agony. One morning, after a terrible storm of passion 
13 


The Victories of Wesley Castle. 

the previous day, he scratched a wound in his arm, and, 
dipping a pen in the trickling blood, wrote out, and 
signed, an oath that he would never get angry again, and 
that he would do right and serve the Lord as long as he 
should live. But, within a week, he tore the paper into 
shreds, and, in almost utter despair, exclaimed : “There 
is no use in trying any more. I can’t be good. I shall 
go to hell, in spite of all that I can do.” After that he 
was so wretched that he was tempted several times to 
kill himself. He used to envy the horses and cows and 
pigs, on his father’s farm, because they had no souls, 
and could not sin, and would not have to go to hell when 
they were dead. A thousand times he said to himself : 
“O, if I were only a beast instead of a boy !” 

One day, in summer, when he was twelve years old, 
the rain drove his father in from the field where they 
had been at work. According to his custom, the elder 
Castle got a book and began to read aloud. The boy 
was expected to listen. That time the book was a vol- 
ume of Spurgeon’s sermons; and the particular sermon 
was on the Judgment. As the father read on, the boy 
got under such awful conviction that he writhed and 
twisted in his chair as though it had been red-hot iron. 
At length he made some excuse to get out of the house 
and went up onto the haymow, in the big barn, and 
rolled upon the hay in a perfect agony. He had a good 
mind to get a rope and hang himself from the great 
beam which ran across the mow at a convenient and in- 
viting distance. He would have done it, only he knew 
that, if he swung himself out of this world, it would' 
only be to drop “alive into a lake of fire burning with 
brimstone, which is the second death.” 

A skeptic might say : “What reason had a good boy, 
14 


The Voice Behind the Chair. 

who had never told a lie, or uttered a profane oath, or 
run away from school, to feel like that ? There was no 
reason. The only trouble with him was the miserable, 
Puritanical, fanatical teaching which he had received 
from his father and from the Methodist Church.” If 
Wesley Castle were here now, and should hear that re- 
mark, he would answer : “I was in an agony that day 
because the Holy Spirit was showing me that my heart 
was enmity against God. It was not any particular sin 
which I had committed ; but I was guilty of the unspeak- 
able sin of not loving a being of infinite goodness and 
love.” 

Thus that “good” boy suffered the agonies of the 
damned, at times, for four long, and never-to-be-forgot- 
ten years. If he had confessed his feelings to his father 
or mother, he might have found relief. But, for some 
reason which he could never explain, or rather for no 
reason, except the perversity of the sinful heart, he 
would not take that most reasonable course. But, in the 
infinite mercy of God, a mighty revival visited that sec- 
tion of the “Old Granite State.” In the village church, 
one evening, Wesley went to the Methodist altar, where 
so many millions have found the “pearl of greatest 
price,” and was gloriously converted. His joy was as 
great as his sorrow had been. He learned the meaning 
of the second Beatitude, “Blessed are they that mourn : 
for they shall be comforted.” Immediately he joined 
the Church on “probation.” In due time, he was bap- 
tized and was received into “full connection.” 

The peace which came into his heart, in the basement 
of that old church, up among the hills of Hew Hamp- 
shire, never wholly left him. He soon went away to 
the Conference Seminary to prepare for college. He 
15 


The Victories of Wesley Castle. 

became so engrossed in study tKat be fell into the habit 
of neglecting some of the means of grace. In college he 
never took the decided stand for Christ which he knew 
he ought. He attended the Sunday services; he usually 
attended Prof. English’s Tuesday evening class at the 
college; he maintained a correct Christian deportment. 
But he was not a positive force for the truth as it is in 
Jesus; he never, in his life, had prayed aloud; he had 
never done the first stroke of personal work for souls ; he 
exerted no positive influence for Christ among his fellow 
students, over whom his influence in that direction might 
have been so great. If he had put forth half as much 
effort to induce young men to give their hearts to Jesus, 
as he had to persuade them to join the Psi Upsilon 
Kappa Fraternity, he would have been the greatest soul- 
winner on that classic hill. 

These thoughts came into the mind of Wesley Castle, 
that afternoon, as he sat in his rocking chair, with his 
feet in the window. “What a poor, wretched specimen 
of a Christian I am,” he said to himself. Suddenly he 
felt the presence of some person, standing behind his 
chair. At the same instant, he seemd to hear a voice. 
Many times since that memorable day, he has solemnly 
declared that he did hear a voice. It said: “You are 
not living as you ought. You ought to take a more de- 
cided stand for me.” “I know it,” was the young man’s 
reply. “You must come out squarely for me, and do all 
you can for my glory, and to spread my truth.” “I 
know I ought to; but I can’t while I remain here. I 
began wrong when I entered college. It is too late to 
turn over a new leaf here. If you will let me alone now, 
I promise you that just as soon as I get away from here, 
I will begin again, and will do every duty and live 
16 


The Voice Behind the Chair. 

wholly and only for you.” “Very well,” said the voice, 
“I’ll take you at your word. I’ll let you alone now; 
but I shall hold you strictly to your promise.” 

The voice ceased. The conversation was so real that 
Wesley Castle sprung to his feet, to see who was there. 
He saw nothing, but a picture of “Christ before Pilate,” 
hanging on the opposite wall, about six feet away. The 
picture and frame did not measure more than two feet 
by two and a half. But it seemed to fill all that side of 
the room; and the figure of Jesus looked as large as life. 
The Savior seemed to turn his face toward him. Those 
sorrowful eyes met his eyes; and there was an expression 
in them which said : “I am suffering all this for you ; 
I am going to the cross for you; and you have been 
ashamed of me all these years.” Wesley fell on his 
face before the picture. He fell at the feet of Jesus. 
He poured out his soul in a flood of tears. He confessed 
his unfaithfulness. He prayed for forgiveness. He 
promised henceforth to live for him who died for his 
redemption. 

How long he lay on the floor, confessing, praying, 
weeping, he could never tell. Suddenly he was aroused 
by a loud knocking at the door. It was some time be- 
fore he could realize where he was sufficiently to answer 
the summons. When he did, there stood Chester Rey- 
nolds, his classmate and most intimate friend. In he 
came, with a cloud on his face, and dropped into a chair. 

“What is the matter, Chet? you look as though you 
had lost your last friend.” 

“Matter ? Haven’t you heard the news ?” 

“Hews? I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.” 

“Why! You certainly knew that the fellows who 
got up the mock-scheme were all subpoenaed before the 
17 


The Victories of Wesley Castle. 

grand jury. Well, we’ve just got back; and every 
mother’s son of us has been indicted for criminal libel, 
except you. Of course the faculty wouldn’t suspect 
such a proper youth as you are. But they picked out 
every one of us, and nobody else. It is the greatest 
wonder in the world that they could guess so straight. 
Probably we shall be convicted and sent to prison. Of 
course they won’t graduate us. That will break my 
poor father’s heart. What shall I do ? I don’t care for 
myself. But I wouldn’t have father know about this for 
a thousand dollars.” 

And then the young fellow laughed a grim, ghostly 
laugh at the thought of a Methodist minister’s son hav- 
ing a thousand dollars. 

Everybody who has been in college, and everybody 
who has lived in a college town, knows what a mock- 
scheme is. Such publications are the delight of students 
and the dread and detestation of professors. At the 
Junior Exhibition, in the month of March preceding the 
beginning of our story, a mock-scheme, of a very scurril- 
ous character, made its appearance. It had the name 
of every speaker, metamorphosed in some ludicrous way, 
but easily recognizable, with his theme twisted into 
some outlandish and funny shape, and all in their exact 
order as on the genuine programme. Then there were 
cruel attacks on members of the faculty, exaggerating all 
their weaknesses, calling attention to their innocent 
eccentricities and holding them up to the laughter and 
contempt of the public. This particular edition of the 
“Gazette of the Infernal Regions” was yery severe on 
the Rev. John Bradford Knox, D.D., LL.D., the Presi- 
dent of the college, who had been growing in unpopu- 
larity with the students for several years. All his sins 
18 


The Voice Behind the Chair. 

and short-comings, real and imaginary, had been raked 
together from the recollections of undergraduates, and 
the traditions of alumni, and poured into this surcharged 
sewer. As soon as the audience had assembled to listen 
to the orations of the Juniors, and before the Pastor of 
the First Presbyterian Church had invoked the divine 
blessing, the mock-schemes came fluttering down, no one 
could tell whence, in a snow storm so dense that every 
gentleman and lady had from two to half a dozen copies 
of the precious document. The faculty were so indig- 
nant and angry at this exhibition of innate deviltry that 
they resolved that they would detect and punish its 
authors, if they never did any thing else for the re- 
mainder of their natural lives. It is unnecessary to de- 
scribe all the methods which they employed. The result 
of nine weeks’ labor, under the lead of Dr. Sharp, who 
was a noted criminal lawyer before he was professor of 
History, has been given. 

Can it be that Wesley Castle had any thing to do 
with that mock-scheme ? The facts in the case are these. 
One day, about a week before Junior Exhibition, Wes- 
ley and Chester were taking a walk in the village which 
lay around the base of the hill on which stood Mount 
Caesar College. Chester said, as they came opposite the 
principal hotel of the town: “Come in here with me; 
I have some business to attend to.” Wesley followed 
him up stairs. On the second floor, Chester gave a 
peculiar knock on a certain door. When it opened, the 
young men walked into the secret conclave of “the 
Mock-scheme Committee.” Chester was a member of 
that body. Wesley was perfectly innocent. He did 
not know where he was till the copy, nearly ready for 
the press, was read to him. Why had he been decoyed 
19 


The Victories of Wesley Castle. 

into that place? They wanted his peculiar genius to 
compose for the scheme some doggerel verses, partly 
English and partly Latin. This request he foolishly 
granted. After a few minutes of thought he scratched 
off two stanzas, very funny but perfectly clean and inno- 
cent, which were accepted with shouts of approving 
laughter. That was Wesley Castle’s initiation into 
membership in the “Mock-scheme Committee.” That is 
all Wesley Castle had to do with the last mock-scheme 
which was ever published at Mount Caesar College. 

On the night following the opening of our story the 
“Mock-scheme Committee” met. Wesley was present 
for the first time since his initiation. The fellows were 
all badly frightened. Several of them were Seniors, 
and they saw nothing before them better than expulsion, 
just as the four years of hard labor were about to end in 
honorable graduation. All were frightened; but not all 
were penitent. Wesley made this proposition: “I will 
go before the President, confess my connection with the 
mock-scheme, tell him that it was fun more than mis- 
chief that prompted the publication, suggest that you 
have been punished sufficiently, and ask him to forgive 
you on condition of each signing a written apology.” 
Wesley labored from nine o’clock till midnight, to get 
them all to agree to that plan. 

The next morning, at half past seven, Wesley knocked 
at the office door of Dr. Knox. It was early; but the 
President was in. “Come” was the response. “O, Mr. 
Castle. I am glad to see you. Take a seat. I wanted 
to see you to give you a piece of good news. Some time 
ago, without your knowledge, I recommended you for 
the chair of Greek in a western college. It is a fine 
position; but no better than you deserve. Three hours 
20 


The Voice Behind the Chair. 

work, and a salary of fifteen hundred dollars to begin 
with, with an increase of two hundred dollars a year for 
five years. That will bring the salary up to twenty-five 
hundred dollars. You will have ample time for study; 
and I expect to live to see you the greatest philologist on 
the continent. The seven o’clock mail, last night, 
brought me a letter, announcing your election to the 
chair of Greek in the University of the State of Cali- 
fornia.” The conversation which followed may be im- 
agined ; but needs not to be repeated. 

As soon as Wesley could get to the subject that was 
on his mind, he said : “Dr. Knox, did you ever suspect 
that I had any thing to do with that mock-scheme?” 
The President’s face grew dark at once. But he an- 
swered : “Certainly not. How could I suspect such a 
man as you have been for four years?” “Did any mem- 
ber of the faculty ever have any such suspicion ?” again 
the young man asked. “Ho,” said the President, “I am 
sure no one ever dreamed that you could have any thing 
to do with such a vile and wicked thing as that.” 

Then Wesley told Dr. Knox all about the matter just 
as we know it was, and made the proposition which had 
been agreed upon, without disclosing any man’s name. 
Wesley’s proposition was that the guilty fellows would 
all own up, and promise never to have any thing to do 
with a mock-scheme again, on condition that the legal 
prosecution should be dropped, and they should be 
allowed to go on and graduate as though nothing had 
happened. 

The President looked very grave. He said he could 
not promise any thing till he had consulted the whole 
faculty. That he would do; and, if Mr. Castle would 
call again, the next morning at the same hour, the de- 

21 


The Victories of Wesley Castle. 

cision of the faculty would be made known. 

Wesley went out of the presence of Dr. Knox feeling 
as though he had been handling ice. When he called 
the next morning, the President informed him that the 
faculty had decided to accept the proposition of the 
offending students, and that he would meet them, in his 
office, that evening, at eight o’clock. 

A more doleful funeral procession never wended its 
way to a cemetery than that “Mock-scheme Com- 
mittee” on its way to the President’s office, that Friday 
night. The fun was all gone. Many times that same 
company of thirteen had gone to class and fraternity 
banquets. How they were going to a banquet of crow 
and humble-pie. Thirteen men on a Friday night. 
Who says Friday is not an unlucky day; and thirteen, an 
unlucky number ? 

The President met the young men with a face of 
granite and an air which was calculated to freeze them 
to the bone. One by one they were called into the 
private office and questioned as to the part of the mock- 
scheme of which each had been the author. On a copy 
which he had preserved Dr. Knox marked off each man’s 
territory, and wrote his name over against it. He was 
very careful to find out who it was who put in the old 
story about his throwing a book at a professor’s head, 
when he was himself a college student. Then the cul- 
prit signed a humble apology, which the President had 
drawn. 

At length the torture was at an end, and the thirteen 
retired together, supposing, that, according to the solemn 
compact made between faculty and students, they were 
fully pardoned and restored to their forfeited rank. One 
of them remarked that he would rather be expelled from 
22 


The Voice Behind the Chair. 

college a hundred times, and spend six months in jail, 
than to pass through such an ordeal again. 

The next morning Wesley and Chester went to the 
city of Dorchester on some business for the Senior class. 
When they returned, at six o’clock, they found the col- 
lege world, and the whole town, in a fearful commotion. 
This was the stunning intelligence which greeted their 
ears: “The whole thirteen mock-scheme fellows, Wes- 
ley included, are indefinitely suspended from college.” 

Wesley never had heard any thing in all his life so 
strange and dreadful as that. Indefinite suspension was 
the next thing to expulsion; and almost as bad. It 
meant that he could not graduate. It meant that his 
election to the chair of Greek in the University of the 
State of California would be revoked. Of course they 
would not have a man whom his would-be Alma Mater 
refused to graduate. It meant the utter ruin of all his 
worldly hopes. It seemed worse than death. Soon his 
grief gave way to rage. He became most furiously angry. 
He had not been so angry since he was a boy, before 
God came to him in converting grace in the old Hew 
Hampshire church. What infamous treachery the 
President and faculty had practiced against him and his 
fellow students. They had pledged their word that if 
the hoys would confess their offense they would be fully 
pardoned; and now, instead, they were virtually ex- 
pelled. It was capital punishment, where pardon had 
been promised. In all the history of the ages he could 
not think of such an infamous act. And the perpetrators 
of that blackest of crimes were professors of religion, 
and several of them were Methodist ministers. The 
Rev. Dr. Knox was expecting to be elected Bishop by 
the next General Conference. What had he done? 

23 


The Victories of Wesley Castle. 

By accident, so far as he was concerned, he had learned 
about the mock-scheme, after it was finished, all but the 
harmless little doggerel which he had thoughtlessly con- 
sented to write. He was punished for confessing a 
trifling offense, if it could justly be called an offense, of 
which he had never been suspected. He was punished 
for saving the college from the disgrace of prosecuting 
some of its brightest students, and sending them to 
prison, when they meant nothing but to have a little fun, 
and to make their loved Institution like all the great 
colleges and universities, which had had mock-schemes 
from time immemorial. 

That night Wesley did not get one hour of sleep. 
The next day, which was Sunday, he stayed away from 
church, the first time in all his life, so far as he could 
remember. He was under awful temptation. He was 
even tempted to throw away his religion, and try to be 
an infidel. 

The following week was the longest in all the course 
of his life. The other students, who had been sus- 
pended, were ordered to leave town on pain of expulsion, 
if they showed their faces till the following Autumn. 
He was allowed to remain, but was, of course, denied all 
the privileges of the Institution. On Saturday Dr. 
Knox sent a private messenger to tell him that the 
faculty had decided to allow him to graduate; but he 
would remain suspended till Commencement day, and 
then he could not appear on the platform with his class, 
or cross the threshold of the hall where the graduating 
exercises were to be held. He would receive his diploma 
privately, by the hand of a messenger. 

Wesley Castle made this reply: “Tell the Rev. John 
Bradford Knox, D.D.,LL.D., President of Mount Caesar 
24 


The Voice Behind the Chair. 

College, that I will not receive a diploma, bearing the 
signatures of such black-hearted perjurers as himself 
and the disreputable faculty of which he is the infamous 
head. So long as they hold the chairs which they dis- 
grace, a diploma from Mount Caesar College would be 
an insult to any honorable man. I shall go out into the 
world and try to win a name in spite of their attempt to 
ruin me. Then, perhaps, after they have gone to dis- 
honored graves, my dear Alma Mater will confer upon 
me the honors which I have earned.” 

Till then Wesley Castle had never been able to hold 
his anger. Naturally he was angry like a flash of light- 
ning, and over his passion as quickly. This time, how- 
ever, he stayed angry several days. 

The next day, Sunday, was churchless and almost 
prayerless. Wesley was in a dreadful state of mind. 
Years afterward he thought: “What would have be- 
come of my soul, if I had died that week ?” 

Monday morning he took the first train away from 
that place. As the cars pulled out of the village, he 
stood on the rear platform, and shaking his clenched 
first toward the dear old buildings on the hill, took a 
solemn vow that he would never look upon them again, 
so long as the faculty contained one of those professors 
who had treated him so unjustly. Then he entered the 
car, threw himself into a seat, and burst into a flood of 
tears. Those were the first tears since he heard of his 
suspension, nine days before. 


25 


II. 

The Death of Self. 

Wesley Castle went from college back to the place of 
his birth, back to his father’s farm. The next mail, 
after his arirval, brought him the official notification that 
he had been expelled from the institution from which he 
would have graduated, in a few weeks, with the highest 
honors. That was the Rev. Dr. John Bradford Knox’s 
response to Wesley’s refusal to accept his well-earned 
diploma at the hands of a covenant-breaker and perjurer. 

Wesley told his parents all the trouble from the be- 
ginning. His mother made no reply but tears. His 
father said: “ Wesley, you have done both right and 
wrong. You were wrong in having anything to do with 
the mock-scheme. When you found yourself in the 
room with the mock-scheme committee, you ought to 
have walked out as quick as you could. You did a 
noble deed when you confessed to the President. He 
and the faculty committed a shameful act when they 
broke their word with you. You did exactly right when 
you refused to take your diploma from such a band of 
robbers. If you had stayed and graduated, you would 
have disgraced the family name ; I should be ashamed to 
own you as my son. Your last words to the President 
were well spoken. They are worthy a descendant of 
John Castle. But, if you were angry when you spoke 
them, you ought to repent and ask God to forgive you, 
and Dr. Knox also.” 

Wesley went to work on the farm. The muscular 
strength and endurance which he had gained in the col- 
lege gymnasium were turned to a good account in driv- 
26 


The Death of Self. 

ing the mower and harvester, and in pitching hay, and 
in cutting and binding corn-stocks, and in building stone- 
wall. Meanwhile he was trying to find a place to teach. 
That was what he had been preparing himself for by 
seven years of laborious study. Of course he lost the 
professorship of Greek in the University of California. 
The Trustees of that great institution would not have an 
expelled student of Mount Caesar College. Wherever 
he turned, that stood in his way. He made application 
for several good places, any one of which would have 
eagerly opened itself to receive him, a little while ago; 
but now his standing with Mount Caesar and Dr. Knox 
barred his way. 

One day, in the latter part of November, he re- 
ceived a letter from the Principal, and virtual proprietor, 
of the Fairview Seminary, offering him a place. The 
writer had heard of Wesley, and all the facts about his 
expulsion from Mount Caesar, from a student who had 
gone to that college from his school. He said to him- 
self : “I like the stuff of which that young man is 
made.” He had two positions to fill — Mathematics, and 
Greek and Latin ; and one or the other of the new teach- 
ers would be Vice-Principal, and head of the institu- 
tion, while he was absent at the state Capital, serving as 
Senator, to which position he had recently been elected. 
Wesley could have either professorship, with, or without, 
the Vice-Principalship. The professorship alone would 
bring him six hundred dollars, and board and furnished 
room, with light and heat. The Vice-principalship 
would add one hundred dollars. Wesley chose the 
Greek and Latin alone. 

Two weeks after he received Prof. Pelton’s letter, 
Wesley was in his new field of labor. He had eight 
27 


The Victories of Wesley Castle. 

recitations each day, except Saturday, each recitation 
covering three-quarters of an hour. He also had charge 
of a building full of boys, calling themselves young 
men, some of them as lawless as state’s prison convicts. 
Then he presided at one of the tables in the dining-room; 
took his turn in conducting morning and evening devo- 
tions in the Seminary chapel; and had to hold himself 
ready to discharge the duties of policeman, anywhere on 
the grounds, at any time, by day or night. All that for 
six hundred dollars, and found. How different from 
the three hours of Greek, and twenty-five hundred dol- 
lars in the University of California. “This is what a 
man gets,” Wesley said to himself, “for confessing a 
fault, and doing a manly thing. If I had kept my 
mouth shut, the faculty at Mount Caesar would never 
have suspected that I had any thing to do with the 
mock-scheme, and I should be professor at the University 
of California, instead of being in this one-horse, back- 
woods boarding-school. I know I did not do right in 
having any connection with that mock-scheme; but I 
meant no wrong, and my confession, when I was in no 
danger of being caught, ought to have atoned for the 
sin of composing that harmless little poetic squib. But, 
I suppose, I must suffer for my fault as long as I live. 
Surely the way of the transgressor is hard, even if he 
transgresses but a little.” 

As soon as Wesley found himself in Fairview Semin- 
ary, he remembered the vow which he made to God, in 
room Ho. 20, Horth Dormitory, Mount Caesar College, 
when the Almighty came and stood behind his chair, 
and seemed to speak in an audible voice. He never had 
forgotten that hour, and he never could. How he be- 
gan, at once, to redeem his pledge. His surroundings 
28 


The Death of Self. 

conspired to help, and to compel, him to do so as he had 
vowed that he would. At every meal in the great din- 
ing-room, in the presence of a dozen teachers and a hun- 
dred students, the blessing was asked before the food was 
served, and thanks were offered after the repast. Twice 
every day the Scriptures were read, and prayer was 
offered, in the Seminary Chapel. Every Tuesday even- 
ing some one conducted a student and teachers’ prayer 
meeting in one of the largest recitation rooms. Prof. 
Castle was one of five male teachers who had all this 
Christian work to perform. There was no honorable 
escape, if he had desired one. So he did his duty. 
Some times the cross was very heavy. For a long time 
he had no joy. One night, after the retiring bell had 
rung, and all the boys were quiet in their beds, he said 
to himself: “I have stood this long enough. I will 
begin anew, and get right with God. He was on his 
knees, or pacing back and forth across the floor, till four 
o’clock in the morning. He came to God, as a wan- 
derer, as a sinner. He confessed his sins, his neglect of 
duty, his pride, his selfishness. He told God that he 
would do every duty, and be his, as long as he should 
live. He prayed that he might have the witness of the 
Spirit, and know that he was saved. He did not pray 
and wrestle for naught. The same peace came into his 
heart, that he first felt in the old church among the Hew 
Hampshire hills, ten years before. The next afternoon, 
before going to his first recitation, he wrote the follow- 
ing letter: 

Fairview, January 20, 18—. 
Rev. John Bradford Knox, D.D., 1,1,. D. 

Dear Sir : — You will doubtless be surprised at the receipt of a 
letter from me. It is with the greatest sadness that I think of my 

29 


The Victories of Wesley Castle. 

last three months at Mount Caesar. As I told you, I regret my 
connection with that miserable mock-scheme. At the time I in- 
tended no wrong. I was taken by surprise. I see now that, in 
staying in the room with the Committee, and writing those verses, 
innocent in themselves, I made myself responsible for the whole 
of the vile and scurrilous sheet. I have repented in dust and 
ashes, before God, and he has forgiven me. I beg your forgive- 
ness, once more. When I sent you that message, by your secre- 
tary, I was angry. In that I committed a great sin, for which I 
crave your forgiveness, as, I believe, I already have the forgiveness 
of God. I can not regret I refused to accept my diploma, in the 
circumstances in which it was offered. But I do deeply deplore 
the spirit in which I refused it. I do not expect that you will 
ever think of me as you used, or that we shall ever be friends. 
But I do hope, and beg, that you will assure me of your forgive- 
ness, for the wrong I have done you. 

Sincerely yours, 

Wesley Castee. 

That letter went in the first mail that left Fairview 
after it was written. But the Rev. Dr. Knox never 
condescended to reply. It did no good in that direc- 
tion; but it was its own answer. It brought great peace 
to the heart of the writer. From that time onward, he 
walked in the light of God. There was nothing be- 
tween him and his heavenly Father. His spiritual sky 
was not always free from clouds. He could not always 
see the sun. But the day of justification and reconcili- 
ation had come; and the night of condemnation never 
returned. 

There were many things which helped Wesley Castle 
to live a Christian life. Allusion has been made to some 
of them. Another is worthy of mention. There was 
a little Methodist Church in the village of Fairview. 
The workers were few. The Pastor, the Rev. Hannibal 

30 


The Death of Self. 

Williams, was very glad when he knew that there was a 
Methodist professor in the Seminary, and resolved to use 
him to the utmost. He persuaded him to take a class in 
the Sunday School. He often asked him to lead the 
Thursday evening prayer meeting, when he himself had 
to be absent on another part of his charge. And, not 
seldom, at a Sunday morning or evening preaching ser- 
vice, he would say: “Will Prof. Castle come forward 
and lead us in prayer?” The first time this happened, 
it almost took away the professor’s breath. To pray be- 
fore the students at chapel exercises was bad enough. 
But to go up the aisle of the church, in the eyes of the 
great congregation, and kneel by the side of the com- 
munion table, and pray. It really seemed to him that it 
would kill him. But he responded to the call, and did 
the best he could, for three reasons. In the first place, 
he was a Methodist, and he would not go back on a 
Methodist minister, in the presence of a lot of Baptists 
and Presbyterians and Episcopalians. That was the 
only church in the place which had regular services; 
and the congregation contained representatives of almost 
every denomination in the United States. He would 
have them understand that a Methodist could pray any- 
where, and at a moment’s notice. In the second place, 
it would never do for the Professor of Greek and Latin 
in the Fairview Seminary to back down and show the 
white feather when he was called upon to do such a little 
thing as to pray. If he could not pray, people would 
think he could not teach the ancient languages. In the 
third place, he had promised God that he would do every 
duty, if it killed him. So he marched up the aisle and 
prayed. But he could not tell one minute after he rose 
from his knees what he had been saying, and, as he 
31 


The Victories of Wesley Castle. 

went back to his pew, he was as wet with sweat as though 
he had been mowing away hay, in his father’s barn, in a 
hot summer day. He would have given a month’s sal- 
ary, any time, rather than perform that duty. But he 
did it again and again, and gained new strength every 
time. God was giving him a very severe course of train- 
ing in his spiritual gymnasium, to fit him for future hap- 
piness and usefulness. He took the instruction like a 
hero, and paid the tuition like a man, and grew stronger 
every day. He soon got where he enjoyed religion, 
which before he had only endured. Years afterward 
he declared that he grew in grace, the first three months 
at Fairview, more than he had during the previous ten 
years of his Christian life. 

But he was not satisfied. Strange as it may seem, it is 
nevertheless a fact that the farther he advanced, the 
more dissatisfied he became. At first, his dissatisfaction 
was very vague and indefinite. Though he had become 
accustomed, from his college training, to analyze his 
mental states and operations, he could not tell what was 
the matter with himself. He was sure he was a child of 
God, and he had a growing relish for divine things. 
And yet he felt that there was a great lack somewhere; 
something was the matter with his religious experience. 

At about the same time three things happened which 
helped to open the professor’s eyes, and make him see 
what he needed, to perfect his religious experience. One 
evening a student, Walter Davis, called at his room, un- 
der a great burden of conviction, to have him pray with 
him, and help him to find the Savior. Castle was glad 
to help him; and did, the best he could. But, after the 
young man was gone, he said to himself : “How weak 
I am. Here I have been a professor of religion and a 
32 


The Death of Self. 

member of the Church, for ten years; and yet I have so 
little of the life of God in my soul that I could not 
afford that boy much help to get to Jesus. What if he 
had come to have me translate a sentence for him in his 
Anabasis, and I had made as poor work as I made just 
now? What would I do? I would resign my position 
at once. If I did not know any more about Greek than 
I do about experimental religion, I would stop calling 
myself a professor of Greek. I must get a great deal 
better religious experience than I have now, or I shall 
soon have none at all.” 

One Friday night, when all the students were sup- 
posed to be attending the meetings of their literary so- 
cieties, the Faculty were all invited to a social function 
in one of the homes of the village. At about nine 
o’clock Prof. Castle went to his room at the Seminary 
to get a book about which he had been talking with Dr. 
Struble, the leading physician of the community. Step- 
ping noiselessly into the hall, he saw two students stand- 
ing in front of his door. They did not see or hear him. 
So he stood and watched them. They were putting 
putty into his key-hole. That delightful little compli- 
ment had been paid to several of the other teachers. 
How he was getting it. He became very angry. Seiz- 
ing the two young men with his powerful hands, he 
dashed their heads together till they could see hundreds 
of stars which have never been laid out on any atlas of 
the heavens. As he butted their craniums against each 
other, he uttered some words which nobody at Fairview 
had ever before heard come from the lips of the digni- 
fied Prof. Castle. Then flinging them from him in a 
heap in the corner, he entered his room. He felt angry 
enough to kill the young rascals. But his passion was 
33 


The Victories of Wesley Castle. 

gone in a moment. He saw how wicked he had been. 
Throwing himself on his face, on the floor, he cried 
aloud to God for mercy and forgiveness. He accused 
himself of murder. He was a murderer at heart. 
“Must I carry this passionate temper with me to the 
grave ? I suppose I must. That is what nearly all the 
preachers and commentators say. It will be the death 
of me some time, I am afraid. I have fought against it 
for years, in my own strength and in the strength of 
God. Often I have beaten it, and kept it down. But it 
has been in my soul all the time, and is just as strong to- 
night as it ever was. O wretched man that I am ! Who 
shall deliver me from the body of this death ?” He did 
not return to the party. He lay there on the floor till 
the ten o’clock retiring bell rung, and long after. He 
prayed till he knew God had forgiven him. But he did 
not pray till the old passionate nature was killed; for, 
although the man after whom he was named, and to 
whose Church he belonged, had clearly taught that 
Christians may experience the death of the carnal mind, 
he did not believe that any such thing was possible. 

The next morning the Professor called the young men 
into his room, their heads still sore and swollen from 
their star-gazing expedition, and asked their forgiveness 
for his angry words and actions. He did not apologize 
for chastizing them — that was their just due — but for 
his display of sinful anger. Of course they were glad 
to get ofl so easily. They wondered that the professor 
should ask their forgiveness; and departed, uncertain 
which to admire the more, the professor’s tremendous 
physical strength or the nobility of his Christian char- 
acter. As for the professor himself, he felt that God had 
forgiven his great sin of murder (he always called it 
34 


The Death of Self. 

that); but his heart did not get over feeling bruised and 
sore for many days. 

The Rev. Hannibal Williams had a protracted meet- 
ing at the church, during the month of February. He 
asked Prof. Castle to help him. This he promised to do, 
remarking, however, that he was wholly unfitted for that 
sort of service. But he attended as frequently as he 
could, and put forth every effort he knew how. He 
prayed and testified and, some times, exhorted after a 
fashion. But how weak he felt. His constant cry to 
God was : “More power ! more power !” “Here I am,” 
he said to himself, “trying to pull sinners out of the rush- 
ing, roaring river of sin, just above the awful Niagara 
of eternal damnation, and it requires nearly all the 
strength and skill I have to keep my own head above 
the water.” An unsaved man he was not. A back- 
slider he was not. A child of God he knew he was. 
And yet so weak! so weak! 

One evening the Presiding Elder, the Rev. Dr. B. J. 
Hand, preached at the church. His theme was “Heart 
Purity.” Wesley had never heard a sermon on that sub- 
ject, so far as he could recall, though he had been brought 
up in that denomination of which the special mission is to 
“spread Scriptural holiness over the lands.” In the 
light of that discourse he saw just what he needed, and, 
in a general way, he saw how to obtain it. After the 
service, Prof. Castle was introduced to the Presiding 
Elder. The first thing the latter said, as he grasped 
the young man’s hand, was: “Professor, you have no 
business here. You ought to be preaching the gospel.” 
That was the first time, in all his life, that any one had 
ever spoken to Wesley on that subject; and the Elder’s 
words made no particular impression at the moment. 

35 


The Victories of Wesley Castle. 

That night, any one watching the window of Prof. 
Castle’s room would have seen a light burning till sun- 
rise. He did not sleep a wink. It was the most terrible 
night of his life. God turned his great search-light full 
upon him, and showed him the depths of his inmost soul. 
He looked down into it, as into a well a hundred feet 
deep, and saw it full of crawling, slimy, venomous, 
deadly things. He saw his angry temper, as he had 
never seen it before. He remembered the words of 
Jesus, in the Sermon on the Mount, “Whosoever is 
angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger 
of the judgment.” He knew that that was the Great 
Teacher’s definition of murder. He also knew that the 
best Greek manuscripts omit the words “without a 
cause.” He had been angry with his brother man, times 
almost without number. Therefore he was a murderer; 
he had murder in his heart. Then he was fearfully am- 
bitious. He could not bear to have any one surpass him. 
His desire to excel had always been an all-consuming 
passion. He was proud and sensitive to the last degree. 
He had always known, and deplored it. How he saw it 
as never before; and loathed himself with unutterable 
loathing. He had an awful will, which did not like to 
yield to any thing on earth or in heaven. His master 
desire had always been to have his own way. That night 
he thought he could understand how Lucifer felt when 
he raised a rebellion among the angels and undertook to 
dethrone the Almighty. He saw some thing in himself 
which, if it could have its way, would hurl the Creator 
from his throne. He was horrified at what he saw, and 
groaned aloud like one undergoing the torture of the 
rack. He was on the rack. His soul, it seemed to him, 
was undergoing the tortures of the damned. 

36 


The Death of Self. 

And yet he felt no condemnation. He felt that he 
was a child of God. Those things within him, which 
made his soul a veritable hell, were there without his con- 
sent. They had been there from before his birth. 
They had been there ever since his existence began. 
That was the teaching of the Bible : “behold, I was shap- 
en in iniquity and in sin did my mother conceive me.” 
Paul taught the same doctrine when he said : “the carnal 
mind is enmity against God; it is not subject to the law 
of God, neither indeed can be.” Since he was born again, 
in the old Hew Hampshire church, the carnal mind had 
been covered over, and, for the most part, held down, by 
the new life, the life of God. Of late he had been gain- 
ing a more and more perfect victory over his inborn sin- 
fulness. But that volcanic eruption of murderous an- 
ger, when he knocked the boys’ heads together for putty- 
ing up his key-hole, was positive proof that the hell of 
depravity was still in his soul in all its original fury and 
power. It must be taken out of him before he could en- 
ter heaven. Why not now? God would have to do 
the work, if it was ever done. If God was a holy and 
almighty being, why would he not give him a holy heart 
at once. The Presiding Elder said he would. So then 
he began to pray : “Create in me a clean heart ; and re- 
new a right spirit within me.” It was never known 
how long he prayed. But he got no relief; and he was 
praying that prayer when the rising sun looked into his 
eastern window. 

From that time on Wesley Castle was an earnest and 
constant seeker for a clean heart, for fifteen months. 
He was at it almost all the time, when he was not obliged 
to be about his official duties, or was not asleep, and he 
spent many sleepless nights, searching the Bible and 
37 


The Victories of Wesley Castle. 

praying the Psalmist’s prayer. With his concordance, 
he went through the entire Bible, examining every pas- 
sage which alludes to holiness and purity of heart. He 
read that part of Hymnal which bears the title “Sanctifi- 
cation,” and committed many of the hymns to memory, 
especially the one which contains the stanza, 

“ O for a heart to praise my God, 

A heart from sin set free ! 

A heart which always feels thy blood, 

So freely spilt for me ! ” 

He read no other book on the subject of Christian purity, 
except Hr. Boardmar.’s “Higher Life.” That gave him 
much light; but he longed intensely after the sympathy 
and counsel of some one who had passed through the same 
experience as himself, and had obtained the blessing of 
a clean heart. He did not know where to find such a 
person. There was not a really spiritual Christian in all 
the Fairview Seminary or Church — that is, one to whom 
he would dare to go in such an emergency, unless it 
might be the Pastor. To the Rev. Hannibal Williams 
he went and unburdened his soul. But he got no help. 
All the Pastor had to say was that he believed in the 
Wesleyan doctrine of Entire Sanctification, every 
Methodist Preacher had to believe it, or say that he did; 
but he had never experienced the blessing. He did go 
forward for a clean heart once, at a camp meeting, but 
he did not get anything, and he gave it up. Wesley 
went away from the parsonage, after that interview, 
groaning in spirit, and saying to himself : “What ‘are 
pastors and preachers for, if they cannot help a poor 
fellow like me in such trouble as this ?” 

In the midst of those terrible fifteen months, two very 
38 


The Death of Self. 

important events took place. One Sunday morning, as 
Prof. Castle was sitting in the gallery of the old Fair- 
view Church, with the choir, of which he was a member, 
he heard the same voice which spoke to him that May 
afternoon, in his room at Mount Caesar College, and 
felt the presence of the same being behind his chair. 
This time the voice spoke in a very soft, but very dis- 
tinct, whisper, as though the speaker’s lips were close to 
his right ear. The voice said: “Don’t you think you 
ought to preach?” That was all it was — a huge inter- 
rogation point. But he could not get rid of it for many, 
many months. Unless his mind was very intently fixed 
on somthing else, he could see that great black, crooked 
sign dancing and making faces to him, in the air. From 
that time on he could not, without a strong effort of his 
will, hear a sermon, without making one of his own on 
the same text, as the minister went on with his discourse 
— a thing which had never been before. 

The other event may best be told in an indirect way. 
One day, in commencement week, Mr. Mather, the 
Treasurer of the Seminary, waited on Prof. Castle to in- 
quire if he would remain in the Institution the coming 
year, at the same salary as the present. The Professor 
of Greek and Latin blushed and said: “Yes; but I 
shall be obliged to have board for two.” Mr. Mather 
said that would be all right; and the interview ended. 
That evening “The Ladies’ Literary Society” of the 
Seminary gave a public entertainment. One of the 
items on the programme was the reading of “The Fair- 
view Gazette.” It contained, along with some serious 
and stately articles, many squibs and jokes about the 
teachers and students. There was one which sent a 
thrill of amusement and surprise through the whole 
39 


The Victories of Wesley Castle. 

audience. It was this: “Prof. Castle will bring a 
bride to Fairview next Fall; for he has engaged board 
for two.” 

Mrs. Castle was the daughter of a Methodist minister, 
and an earnest Christian. She soon knew all about her 
husband’s spiritual troubles, and became a seeker, with 
him, of a clean heart, the Pentecostal gift, the baptism of 
the Holy Ghost. Together they searched the Scriptures 
to know the mind of God on this subject. Together 
they spent many seasons and many hours of prayer. 

Meanwhile Wesley’s agony was becoming most in- 
tense. He had consecrated all to God; he knew he had. 
He was willing to do any thing the All-wise might re- 
quire of him. One day he said to his wife; “If God 
commands, I will preach the gospel; or I will go as a 
missionary to the most distant island of the sea; or I will 
sell my books and resign my professorship and take a 
shovel and go to digging ditches. I am ready to do any 
thing, or go anywhere, or be any thing, if God will only 
give me a clean heart, and fill me with his love. I know 
what Jesus meant when he spoke about hungering and 
thirsting after righteousness. I am sure that no cast- 
away at sea ever longed for food or water as I long for 
the fulness of the divine Spirit. I cannot think of any 
thing — not even heaven — that I want a thousandth part 
as much as I want to have my heart cleansed from all 
sin. If that blessing were a hundred feet distant, and 
the only way to reach it were to walk to it, with naked 
feet, over a pavement of red-hot bricks, I know I would 
start for it without a moment’s hesitation. I must have 
it, or I shall die. I will seek it till I have it, or till I 
die.” 

He spent hours and hours on his knees, pleading and 
40 


The Death of Self. 

groaning for a clean heart. Whenever he conld catch 
a moment between recitations, he would lock his door 
and throw himself upon his knees. His very breath was 
prayer. He was ready to accept help from any source. 
Once, on the cars, returning from a vacation trip, he saw 
a man, to whom he had never been introduced, but 
whom he had seen years before, when he was in college, 
conducting a revival meeting with a praying-band, of 
which he was leader. Wesley said to himself: 
“That is a devoted man of God; he must know all about 
this doctrine and experience.” So he introduced him- 
self to him, and sat down beside him, and unburdened 
his heart; but the good man, though a “master in Israel” 
could not understand him and could not help him. On 
that particular day, it seemed to him that he should die. 
He almost wished the cars would run off the track and 
dash him to pieces. And still he did not feel condemn- 
ed. He felt that God smiled upon him, and called him 
his child. He was as deeply convicted of the need of a 
clean heart as he had ever been of the need of pardon 
and conversion. But the two kinds of conviction were 
very different. Then he was a guilty rebel, seeking es- 
cape from the sword of divine justice which was con- 
tinually hanging over his head. ISTow he was a child of 
God, seeking the portion which belongs to every member 
of the divine family, here on the earth. 

Some times he almost had the blessing. Again and 
again, it would seem to see it just above his head, and he 
would actually stretch up his hands to seize it; but it 
would elude his grasp. Then he would pant and groan 
and cry, like a starving child tantalized with a piece of 
bread. 

One Sunday night, after church, he prayed in his 

41 


The Victories of Wesley Castle. 

room till mid-night. His agony, at length, became so 
intense that it seemed to himself that he felt like the 
Savior in the garden, when he sweat great drops of blood. 
He was at the end of all his efforts. He could do no more. 
“If I were sinking into hell,” he said, “I could do no 
more.” 

Just then he heard the very same voice which he had 
heard twice before — in his room at the college, and in 
the gallery of the Fairview Methodist Church; and he 
felt the presence of the same divine Being. This time 
the voice said : “Why don’t you believe ?” 

“Believe what?” 

“Believe that the blessing is yours. Have you not 
consecrated all to me?” 

“Yes, Lord, I know I have. You know T I have.” 

“Well then, believe that I accept you as an object 
of my sanctifying power. Believe that I do the work, 
this moment, according to my promise. Is it not written, 
‘What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that 
ye receive them, and ye shall have them’ ?” 

“Yes, Lord. I do believe. It is done according to 
your word.” He sprung to his feet. “It is done,” he 
said again and again. “The blessing of a clean heart is 
mine.” He looked down at the chair, where he had 
been praying so long. It seemed to him that it would 
be a sin to pray for ? clean heart any more. He never 
did pray for that blessing again, as long as he lived. He 
went to praising God that the work was done. And yet 
he had no feeling at all. He did not feel any different 
from what he had before except that he had left off 
struggling, and was at rest. He went to bed. He went 
to sleep, saying to God : “The blessing of a clean heart is 
mine. You have given it to me. You have not yet 
42 


The Death of Self. 

given me the witness of the Spirit that my heart is 
cleansed from all unrighteousness; but you will when 
you get ready. I am willing to wait for it till the judg- 
ment day, if that is your will.” 

The next morning he woke up in the same state of 
mind and heart which he had when he went to sleep. 
So it was all the week — a perfect faith that the blessing 
was his ; but no feeling, or very little feeling, that it was. 

That was a very hard and trying week. The boys in 
his dormitory were unusually unruly and full of pranks, 
and the devil was unusually active. But his soul was 
kept in perfect peace. It seemed that there was a wall 
of fire, about ten feet high, and thirty feet in circum- 
ference, all around him. Satan would come, every little 
while, and poke his head above the fence and make 
faces at him, but could not touch him. 

The next Sunday afternoon, the professor was sitting 
in his room, with Mrs. Castle. She was reading to him 
in the “Life of Carvosso.” She came to a stanza of a 
hymn. 

It was this : 

“ Thee I can love, and thee alone, 

With a pure delight and inward bliss ; 

To know thou tak’st me for thine own : 

O what a happiness is this.” 

Wesley said: “Let us sing it.” He began without 
any emotion. But, when he reached the end of the sec- 
ond line, he could go no further. He was deluged with 
waves of glory. He was in an ecstacy of joy. It seem- 
ed as though heaven had come down into the room. It 
seemed to be filled with the brightness of a thousand 
suns. He was a thousand times happier than he had 
ever supposed he should be in heaven. God was right 
43 


The Victories of Wesley Castle. 

there. He was as real as though he could be seen by 
mortal eyes. The great billows of bliss kept rolling over 
him. It seemed as though immense wings overhead 
were fanning him. The weight of glory became so heavy 
that it seemed as though it would crush him. He rose to 
his feet and staggered to the piano and leaned against it 
for support. For about thirty minutes he stood there bra- 
cing himself against the boundless ocean of divine love, 
which kept hurling its mountain-like waves over his 
head. At length he could endure it no longer, and he 
said : “O God, withhold they hand, or I shall die of joy.” 

All this time he felt so clean. He felt, and lmew, 
that his old passionate temper, which had tormented him 
all his life, was gone. All the pride, and selfishness, 
and unholy ambition, and self-will were gone, branch and 
root. All sin was gone. He was as sure as he was that 
he was alive that God had cleansed his heart from all 
sin. The words “ALL Gone, ALL Gone, ALL SIN is 
Gone” kept reverberating through the chambers of his 
inmost soul; and he knew that they were the words of 
God. 

That night, at the religious service held in the Semin- 
ary chapel, Prof. Castle gave a clear and ringing testi- 
mony that the blood of Jesus Christ had cleasned him 
from all unrighteousness. That testimony was the be- 
ginning of a better life to many souls. 

After the meeting he wrote the following letter : 

Fairview, May 9th, 18 — . 

My dear Father : 

I write a few lines to tell you, and my dear Mother and Sister, 
of the goodness of God. This afternoon I had a most beautiful 
vision of heaven — I can call it nothing else. God has revealed 
himself to me in mighty power. I have the witness, clear and 
strong, that God has cleansed me from all sin. Praise God, from 
44 


The Death of Self. 

whom all blessings* flow. Last Sabbath I resigned all to God, and 
believe that he accepted me entire; but I had not the witness, 
except in a slight degree. To-day the witness came, and all is 
glory. 

Your affectionate Son, 

WESLEY. 



45 


III. 

Abundant Life After Death. 

That Sunday night Prof. Castle was too happy to 
sleep. He did get some sleep, to be sure ; but it was a 
peculiar kind of sleep, in which he did not lose his con- 
sciousness, but seemed to be floating away among the 
stars, on a silvery cloud, borne up on waves of celestial 
music. Although he hardly slept at all, he rose in the 
morning perfectly refreshed, feeling stronger in body 
than he ever had before in all his life. When, accord- 
ing to custom, he threw himself on his knees, at his bed- 
side, to offer his morning prayer, he could not pray. He 
could not think of any thing that he wanted. He could 
only praise God for the fulness of blessing which he had 
received. Such a praise service he had never known. 
His heart was full of praise. He said “Praise the Lord” 
aloud, again and again. Then the great billows of joy 
began to roll over him, as they did Sunday afternoon. 
They kept coming, bigger and bigger, and higher and 
higher, and louder and louder, till he thought he should 
be drowned. When he tried to rise, he found that his 
strength was gone; he could not stand. It was a long 
time before he could get on his feet; and then he stagger- 
ed like a drunken man. He thought of what the ene- 
mies of Christ said about the disciples who had just been 
filled with the Holy Ghost, on the day of Pentecost: 
“These men are full of new wine.” He was filled with 
the new wine of the kingdom. He was Spirit-intox- 
icated. It was a full half hour before he could compose 


46 


Abundant Life After Death. 

himself sufficiently to go to breakfast. At the table he 
could not eat, he was so happy. The students gazed at 
him in wonder. They said to each other, after they left 
the dining room, “Did you see how Prof. Castle’s face 
shone?” Long years after, that breakfast was remem- 
bered by many, and one, who became a minister of the 
gospel, declared that, at the time, and ever after, it seem- 
ed to him like the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. 

That Monday morning, it was Prof. Castle’s turn to 
officiate at the chapel devotions. That duty had always 
been a cross to him. He had borne the cross without a 
murmur, and had derived strength and blessing from 
so doing. The cross had been growing lighter; but it 
had not ceased to be a cross. That morning, he selected, 
as a Scripture lesson, the third chapter of the First Epis- 
tle of John. As soon as he began to read the opening 
verses: “behold what manner of love the Father hath 
bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of 
God; therefore the world knoweth us not, because it 
knew him not. Beloved, now are we the sons of God; 
and it doth not yet appear what we shall be ; but we know 
that, when he shall appear we shall be like him; for we 
shall see him as he is,” his eyes filled with tears of joy, 
and he was so blinded that he would have been obliged 
to stop, if he had not known the chapter by heart. As 
it was, he was so choked by the surges of blissful emotion 
which kept coming up from his overcharged heart that 
he left off with the ninth verse, “whosoever is born of 
God doth not commit sin; for his seed remaineth in him, 
and he cannot sin, because he is born of God,” gave out 
a hymn and sat down. While the hymn was being sung 
he sat, quivering with emotion, trying to compose him- 
self, trying to dry his tears of ecstacy, trying to keep the 
47 


The Victories of Wesley Castle. 

hallelujahs from coming out of his lips. When the sing- 
ing was over he staggered to the desk, knelt and began 
to pray. It was some seconds before he could utter a 
word, so overwhelming were his emotions. By a tre- 
mendous exertion of his will, he controlled himself suffi- 
ciently to speak a few sentences, and say “Amen.” Ris- 
ing from his knees, he hurried to his room, without stop- 
ping to speak to anybody, and, throwing himself upon 
a couch, rolled in an agony of joy for fifteen minutes, 
till he recovered strength sufficiently to go to his recita- 
tion room. For many weeks that experience was repeat- 
ed every time he prayed at chapel devotions. He woiild 
have to hold in, with all his might, and pray soft and low 
and short and slow, lest he should go all to pieces, and 
shout, or lose his strength and sink unconscious to the 
floor, in the presence of all the teachers and students. 
Following every such attempt to pray in chapel, would 
be quarter of an hour, or more, of unutterable bliss in his 
room, in which he would roll on his couch, weeping, 
laughing, shouting, begging the Almighty to hold back 
the billows of salvation, so that his poor, weak body could 
recover strength for the duties of the day. This is no 
invention of the imagination. It is a historical fact that, 
after Professor Wesley Castle received the Second Bless- 
ing, the baptism of the Holy Ghost that Sunday after- 
noon, what had been his greatest cross became his great- 
est joy; that which had been the hardest duty for him 
to perform became the easiest; only, in a certain sense, 
it was hard because it was so exceedingly easy. Before 
he had borne the cross like a martyr. How the cross was 
a pair of mighty wings, bearing his soul aloft to the 
third heaven of divine love and joy. How he knew the 
meaning of Hugh Stowell’s hymn about prayer: 

48 


Abundant Life After Death. 

“ There, there on eagle wings we soar, 

And sin and sense molest no more ; 

And heaven comes down our souls to greet, 

While glory crowns the mercy-seat.” 

There was a student in Fairview Seminary, named 
Pulver. He was fitting for college. He had the law in 
mind. He was a brilliant young man, with a noble, 
manly character. But he was not a Christian. He was 
somewhat skeptical. He was a great admirer of Prof. 
Castle; and Prof. Castle was very fond of him. The 
professor had done his best to win Pulver to Christ. 
They had spent hours together, talking upon the subject 
of religion. Pulver always expressed himself with the 
most perfect sincerity and candor, and always listened 
with the greatest respect to all that the professor had to 
say; but he did not seem to be making the slightest pro- 
gress toward the light. The conversation would usually 
begin with some infidel objection against the Bible. The 
professor would have no great difficulty in answering it, 
and in driving Pulver to the wall, for he was not well 
posted in infidel arguments, and was very far from being 
an infidel at heart. 

Then the student would commonly talk in this strain : 
“Professor, I can’t see that what you call salvation saves 
anybody. I have known hundreds of professed Chris- 
tians, and I can’t think of one who seemed to be saved. 
I have been to church and Sunday school and prayer 
meeting all my life; I suppose that I have heard thou- 
sands of sermons, from scores of ministers; and they all 
tell the same story. You know what they all say. This 
is about what it is : T know by many years of painful 
experience that religion is a divine reality. I have a 
great many temptations. I make many crooked paths. 
I do, every day, the things I know I ought not to do, 
49 


The Victories of Wesley Castle. 

and I leave undone many things which I know I ought 
to do. I know there is nothing good in me. But we 
read in the Good Book that, if any man sin, we have an 
Advocate with the Father. I hope to persevere in this 
way, and get to heaven at last.’ They don’t all talk quite 
as blue as that; but some of them are bluer still.” 

Once in talking with the professor, Pulver said : 
“We have an old man in our church at Booneville, where 
I live, whom everybody calls Daddy Wilson. He’s a 
good man, and, I suppose, a Christian. I have never 
heard any thing against his character. But he talks 
blue, like all the rest of you Christians. One evening, 
in prayer meeting, he had been telling what an awful 
hard time he had, serving the Lord, and how much 
smarter and stronger the devil was than both of them. 
He got off his usual confession that he did, every day, 
the things he knew were wrong, and left undone the 
things he knew he ought to do, and sat down with a fear- 
ful groan. There is an infidel in the town, named Dick 
Wormley. For a wonder, he was at prayer meeting 

that night. He had never been seen in such a place 
before. Another thing about him which was not strange 
was that he was more than half drunk. As soon as 
Daddy Wilson sat down, drunken Dick got up, and, 
before any one could guess what he was going to say, he 
out with this, addressing the minister: ‘Elder, I want 
to be baptized and joint the Church. Daddy Wilson is 
a good Christian, ain’t he? I suppose he’s as good as 
you’ve got. They call him one of the pillows of the 
Church. He’s just related his Christian experience; 
and he’s related mine too. He says he does, every day, 
what he knows is wrong, and leaves undone what he 
knows he oughter do. That’s just what I do. If he’s 
50 


Abundant Life After Death. 

a good Christian, so am I. So, if you please, I want to 
join the Church.’ ” 

“Of course, I know Daddy Wilson is a great deal 
better man than Dick Wormley. But, so far as being a 
Christian is concerned, I can’t see any difference be- 
tween them. They both do what they know to be 
wrong, and omit to do what they know to be right. The 
only difference between them is that one commits greater 
sins than the other. They differ only in degree. No, 
after all, I think Daddy Wilson is the worse man of the 
two, according to his own testimony, for he has more 
light, and he professes to be a Christian, when he is not, 
and so is a hypocrite, and Dick Wormley professes noth- 
ing. According to your Bible, they are both sinners, 
and are both on the way to hell.” 

“I said I never knew a professed Christian who seemed 
to be saved. I did one. Some years ago, the pastor of 
our Booneville Church died, and the Presiding Elder 
sent a young fellow, from the Theological Seminary, to 
fill out the year. He was very talented, and might 
have been very popular. They all said that he was the 
smartest preacher that they had ever had in that pulpit. 
But he preached that salvation saves, and the pillars of 
the Church did not like that. Almost the first sermon 
he preached raised an awful row. His text was : 
‘Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin.’ He 
told them that they could, by the grace of God, live 
without the commission of known sin; and that, if they 
did what they knew was wrong, they were sinners; and 
that, if they were sinners, they could not be saints ; and 
that, if they were not saints, they were not the children 
of God, they had not been born again, but were on the road 
to perdition, just like ordinary sinners. The whole town 
51 


The Victories of Wesley Castle. 

was in a ferment that week. The church people were 
as mad as hornets. You would have supposed that they 
loved sin, and that it was a glorious privilege to commit 
sin, and that the young preacher was trying to deprive 
them of their God-given rights. They could not have 
been more enraged at him, if he had preached Mormon- 
ism or Mohammedanism. A committee waited on him, 
before the next Sunday, and told him that they could 
not stand such doctrine as he preached. He asked them 
if he did not prove all that he said from the Bible. 
They said not from the Bible, as they understood it. 
Anyhow, whether it was Bible doctrine or not, Boone- 
ville would not stand it. ‘Why,’ they said, ‘you have 
destroyed the hope of almost everybody in Booneville 
Methodist Church, to say nothing of all the Episcopal- 
ians and Presbyterians and Baptists. If you keep on 
preaching such damnable doctrine as that, nobody will 
be able to sleep in all these churches, and you will send 
us all to hell together. Of course nobody can live with- 
out sin. Haven’t we tried it long enough to know?’ 
The next Sunday the young fellow gave them a stronger 
dose than the first. He not only preached that the 
Almighty can keep a man from doing what he knows to 
be wrong; but that he can so cleanse his heart that there 
will be no bad passions left in him to incline him to sin. 
Everybody declared that such preaching was perfectly 
awful. So the Official Board wrote to the Presiding 
Elder, and he took the young theologue away, and sent 
a man who was warranted to preach the good, old, 
blessed, comforting doctrine that Christians must sin 
every day, in thought, word and deed. I think that 
young preacher had salvation, if there is such a thing; 
for, in all the abuse and persecution which he suffered at 
52 


Abundant Life After Death. 

the hands of the Boonevilleites, he never lost his balance, 
and was never anything but gentleness and sweetness 
personified.” 

“Now your Bible teaches that salvation saves; that re- 
ligion makes folks good and pure and victorious and 
happy in all circumstances. I don’t believe the Bible 
much. But if I could find a few specimens of Christ’s 
power to save, I might believe, and want to be a Chris- 
tian too. If I can judge from what Christians say about 
themselves, I am just as well off without religion as with 
it ; and better too, for I should have to be a hypocrite to 
be a Christian, and I know I am not now.” 

The professor could not answer the student. He 
tried to; he used many words. But he could not satisfy 
him, and he could not satisfy himself. 

The Tuesday evening prayer meeting, following that 
glorious Sunday, was led by Prof. Castle. It was a 
wonderful meeting. Nothing like it had been known 
since the founding of Fairview Seminary. Nearly all 
the students were present; and all the teachers, except 
Principal Pelton. There were students there who had 
never been seen in such a place before. Everybody could 
see that God was with the professor, as soon as he rose 
to open the service. There was a shine on his face, and 
a something in his voice, which seemed to belong to the 
upper world. After the singing of two or three hymns 
and a short season of prayer, the leader spoke for about 
thirty minutes. He related his experience. He told 
the story of his conviction and conversion, when he was 
a boy. He told about his religious life at college. He 
gave a very vivid description of his conversation with 
God, in his room, that May afternoon, two years before. 
Then he related, quite minutely, how the Holy Spirit 
53 


The Victories of Wesley Castle. 

showed him his need of a clean heart ; how he was made 
to realize his sinfulness, while, at the same time, con- 
scious that his sins had been forgiven; how he vainly 
struggled, for fifteen dreadful months, to get rid of the 
carnal mind; how, at last, he took the blessing, as a gift 
from God, that Sunday night; and how the mighty bap- 
tism of the Holy Ghost came the following Sunday 
afternoon. He spoke with wonderful pathos and power. 
He seemed to his hearers to be surcharged with divine 
electricity. He appeared like a huge dynamo, belted 
on to the throne of Omnipotence. They thought that 
they could see sparks of celestial energy darting out from 
him in all directions. They were most powerfully 
moved, as a fierce wind moves the tops of forest trees. 

When he reached the end of his story, the professor 
said: “Is there a Christian who feels the need of a 
heart washed whiter than snow, and who will now seek 
perfect cleansing through the baptism of the Holy 
Ghost? If so, get as near to this platform as you can.” 
Instantly seventy-five persons, including all the teachers, 
were on their feet, pressing to the front. The front rank 
dropped on their knees, on the platform step; the others 
knelt close behind; and all began to weep and pray, each 
for himself, or herself, as though there were not another 
person in the room. 

“Is there an unsaved person in the chapel, who wants 
to get to Jesus, and receive the forgiveness of sins, and 
a new heart, to-night? If there be one, get as far to the 
front as you can, and as quickly as you can,” said the 
leader. Full a hundred students were on their feet, 
pressing to the front, in a minute. 

It would be impossible to describe that after-meeting. 
The ten o’clock retiring bell was not rung till after 
54 


Abundant Life After Death. 

twelve. More than a score of souls were joyously con- 
verted. Fifty believers entered into the experience of 
perfect cleansing. And a revival began which swept 
through the school, leaving less than fifty unsaved stu- 
dents, out of an entire enrollment of three hundred and 
twenty-five names. 

Pulver was at that meeting. But he did not move. 
He sat on the back seat till the end, without the slightest 
manifestation of feeling. The next evening he came to 
Prof. Castle’s room, and requested a few minutes’ con- 
versation. Almost the first thing he said was: “Pro- 
fessor, I want you to pray for me. I am a miserable 
sinner, and I can’t live till to-morrow morning, if I don’t 
get relief.” That interview lasted two hours and a half. 
When it closed, Pulver was rejoicing in the conscious- 
ness that he was a child of God. To-day he is one of the 
most successful pastors and revivalists in the Methodist 
Episcopal Church. 

During the conversation which passed between him 
and Prof, and Mrs. Castle, that Wednesday night, Pul- 
ver used language like this: “I was at the meeting in 
the chapel, last Sunday night, I heard your testimony 
that the blood of Jesus Christ cleansed you from all sin. 
I could see that you were not the same man you used to 
be. You made me think of the young preacher at 
Booneville. I saw — everybody saw — how you were 
almost overcome when you read and prayed at the chapel 
devotions, Monday morning. I could see that God had 
come into your soul. I said to myself, the Professor has 
got what the Booneville supply-preacher told us about. 
Then your talk last night ! That used me up entirely. 
I wouldn’t go forward. But nobody there was more 
deeply stirred than I was. I could see that you’d got 
55 


The Victories of Wesley Castle. 

what the Bible says the apostles got on the day of Pente- 
cost. I could see that you’d got the salvation that saves. 
I know what your natural disposition is, Professor, — 
excuse my plainness of speech. I know what was in 
you when you knocked the heads of those fellows to- 
gether, and almost cracked their skulls. That was 
what Paul calls the ‘flesh’ and ‘the Old Man.’ I know, 
by the way you talk and look, that the Strong Man, the 
Lord Jesus Christ, the Conqueror of death and hell, has 
knocked the Old Man clean out of you. Now I want 
the same kind of religion you have. I wouldn’t give a 
cent for the kind you had when you got mad at those 
boys — excuse me, Professor — if I couldn’t get any 
further. What you had then was all right, as far as it 
went; but it didn’t go half far enough. Now I want to 
take the first degree to-night, if you think such a wicked 
fellow as I am can find mercy; and then I’m going on 
to get the second degree, as soon as I can, and all the 
other degrees, if there are any more, up to the thirty- 
third or the thirty-thousandth.” 

Just as he was going away, at half-past ten, he 
dropped this remark: “Professor, if all the preachers 
would get the experience you’ve got, and preach it, it 
wouldn’t be long before the last sinner on the globe 
would get converted.” 

Prof. Castle’s experience had to be tested, that he, 
and others might know whether it was pure gold. There 
was a recent arrival among the students, from the far 
West. He had been a cowboy in New Mexico. His 
father was governor of that territory. He went by the 
name of Carter. He was tall, muscular and very ath- 
letic. He was rough and uncouth in dress and manners. 
He was very ignorant, so far as books were concerned. 

56 


Abundant Life After Death. 

His father had sent him to Fairview, partly to get rid of 
him, and partly to have him tamed and taught. He soon 
came in conflict with every rule in the school. He was 
as wild as a Texan steer. He would go and come, as he 
pleased, without any regard whatever for study-hours 
and rising and retiring bells. He would go to meals, 
and chapel, dressed in a red flannel shirt, with suspend- 
ers in plain sight, and without coat or vest. He per- 
sisted in smoking in his room, and anywhere else, on the 
Seminary premises, where he happened to be. He used 
profane language with the utmost freedom, without 
seeming to know what he was saying. He was up before 
the faculty, before he had been at Fairview a week. 
Principal Pelton told the teachers to be easy with Car- 
ter, and indulge him in his idiosyncrasies, and wink at 
his violations of rules, and get along with him the best 
way they could, for the sake of what he might be if he 
could be tamed, and for the sake of his father’s money; 
for he was reported to be a millionaire. 

Prof. Pelton’s wishes were carried out till Carter be- 
came an unendurable nuisance. He did exactly as he 
pleased. He walked right over every rule and regula- 
tion. He treated the teachers as though they were his 
servants. He insulted them to their faces. Having 
plenty of money, and scattering it freely among his 
associates, he soon became exceedingly popular with the 
rougher portion of the boys, and was their ring-leader in 
all sorts of petty, and not so petty, violations of law and 
order. He was in a fair way to bring the institution into 
utter confusion, chaos and ruin. He caused the great- 
est annoyance to Prof. Castle, because he roomed in his 
building, and was under his special supervision. That 
particular member of the faculty gave a great deal of 

57 


The Victories of Wesley Castle. 

thought and effort and prayer to his case, blending kind- 
ness and firmness, persuasion and authority, trying to 
arouse an honorable ambition, and a desire and determ- 
ination to be a man. 

Carter was at that wonderful prayer meeting. He 
surprised everybody by his respectful behavior. One of 
the teachers thought he saw him wipe his eyes while the 
leader was relating his experience. The next day he 
sought an interview with Prof. Castle, in which he con- 
fessed that he had committed almost every crime but 
murder, during his cow-boy life, and asked him to pray 
for him. They had prayers on the spot; but whether 
the fellow was sincere, or not, the professor was never 
sure. 

Carter’s pious spell lasted about a week. After that 
he was worse, and grew more and more hateful and un- 
manageable. One evening Prof. Castle found him, in 
his room, in a state of beastly intoxication. The next 
day, when he talked with him on the subject, he got 
angry and used the most profane and insulting language. 
The professor reported the case to the Faculty, and they 
passed a unanimous vote, expelling him from the Insti- 
tution. 

That was the beginning of trouble. The expelled 
student refused to leave the building. He swore that, 
having paid his board and tuition, he would stay as long 
as he wanted to. A constable was called, and he and 
his goods were put off the premises by force of law. 
Then he took rooms at the village hotel, and set himself 
to work to annoy the Seminary and its faculty, in every 
way his cunning and depraved mind could invent and 
execute. Depredations, too numerous to be mentioned, 
were committed upon the Seminary property. One 
58 


Abundant Life After Death. 

night, the front of the principal building was daubed, 
from underpinning to roof, with stripes of black paint. 
One morning, the roof was found to be decorated with 
stuffed beasts and birds, taken from the museum of 
natural history. At another time, the door to the reci- 
tation room of the Professor of Natural Science was 
forced open, and a valuable manikin was carried off, 
never to be found. Everybody believed that Carter 
was the author of these deeds. But, although Prof. Pel- 
ton employed a detective from a neighboring city, noth- 
ing could be discovered to warrant the arrest of the cow- 
boy from New Mexico. 

Of course, Prof. Castle was the chief object of Car- 
ter’s wrath and hatred, because it was through him that 
he had suffered expulsion. For weeks he racked his 
fertile brain to think of some diabolical outrage which 
he could perpetrate upon the man who was, at the same 
time, praying God to show him how he could do him 
good. Just what Carter intended to do to Prof. Castle, 
has never been discovered. But it is believed that he 
had made a plot to kidnap him, with the help of other 
students, carry him to some unfrequented spot, strip and 
maim and disfigure him, and leave him to get home the 
best way he could. 

One Sunday night, during the service at the Seminary 
Chapel, he got into Prof. Castle’s dormitory, and into 
the north-west cornel room, on the fourth floor. That 
night, when all were asleep, the plot, whatever it was, 
was to be carried out. 

At about half -past ten o’clock, the professor, who had 
not yet retired, heard a slight noise on one of the upper 
floors. He went up in the dark, to ascertain what was 
going on. He followed the sound till it led him to the 
59 


The Victories of Wesley Castle. 

room where Carter and his confederates were lurking. 
It is probable that the noise was made on purpose to 
draw the professor into a trap. As soon as the pro- 
fessor rapped, the light, which had been shining through 
the key-hole, went, out, and perfect silence reigned. 
The professor rapped again. Then the door partly 
opened, and a gruff voice asked: “Who are you? and 
what do you want ?” It was Carter’s voice. “I am Pro- 
fessor Castle,” said the visitor, “and I want to come in.” 
“You can’t come in, without the password,” was the 
answer. 

The professor, in the dim moonlight which came in 
through the hall window, could see a tall form standing 
in the narrow opening between the partly-opened door 
and the casing. Without a word, he threw himself 
against the door. The next instant he was in the room, 
and the door was closed behind him. He was in the 
midst of a lot of desperate fellows, whose leader was 
equal to any crime. He had no time for deliberation. 
His first thought was to find out who the students were 
who were thus violating the rules of the school. In the 
dim light he could see eight or ten shadowy forms. He 
dove for them, with outstretched arms. He caught, and 
recognized by feeling, four or five. The rest, and all, 
terrified by the presence of the brave professor, whose 
herculean strength they knew so well, forgot their oath 
of obedience to their “wild-west” leader, and fled pre- 
cipitately to their rooms and their beds. 

Carter remained. With a horrid oath, he threw him- 
self, with all his might, upon the professor. With 
curses and imprecations which we ought not to repeat, 
he yelled: “I’ve got you now! I’ve got you now! 
You had me expelled from school ! I’ll pay you back ! 
I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you!” 


60 


Abundant Life After Death. 

There was a terrible battle there in the darkness. 
Carter fought to kill the man whom he hated without 
cause. Wesley Castle fought to save his life. If he 
could have gotten away from the clutches of his an- 
tagonist, he would have fled to his room, and left him 
alone. If he had not been in that far-away corner of 
the building, he would have shouted for help. He knew 
that no one would hear him but the confederates of his 
enemy, and they would come help their leader. So he 
had to fight or die; for he quickly discovered that it 
was Carter’s purpose to drag him to the open window 
and hurl him to his death, on the hard ground, forty feet 
below. 

It was a desperate battle indeed. The antagonists 
were very nearly equally matched. Carter had the 
greater strength by nature. Wesley had had the better 
training, and was the quicker and more supple. Carter 
got his physical education on the plains, riding wild 
ponies and lassoing wild cattle. Castle got his on his 
father’s farm, and in the gymnasium and athletic field 
of Mount Caesar College. 

Carter’s aim was to push, or drag, his antagonist to the 
window, and hurl him to the ground. Castle’s aim was 
to defeat the purpose of Carter, and overpower, without 
hurting, him. It was fortunate for Castle that his 
enemy was unarmed: for, had he had pistol or dirk, so 
great was his anger, he would certainly have murdered 
our hero, without compunction or hesitation. 

As long as the battle lasted, one of the wrestlers was 
cursing and swearing, while the other was silently pray- 
ing for himself and his enemy. 

Castle’s strength and endurance had never been so 
severely tried in all his life. If he had felt that it was 
61 


The Victories of Wesley Castle. 

right for him to injure his antagonist, he might have 
ended the fight by giving him a few blows in the face, 
such as he had learned how to deliver with boxing-gloves, 
at Mount Caesar. But he was determined not to do 
Carter any harm, unless it was absolutely necessary, to 
save his own life. 

Nobody but a professional athlete could describe such 
a contest. It is beyond our power. The battle was 
going against Castle. Carter was driving him slowly 
toward the fatal window. But Castle had more reserve 
strength, and was cooler and more calm. Beside, 
though some would call such a suggestion superstition, 
Castle had an immortal helper. The angel, who 
wrestled with Jacob at Jabbok, was in that room that 
night. Summoning the last ounce of his bodily 
strength, and breathing out all his soul to God in prayer, 
and, at the same time, executing a skilful movement with 
his right foot, he threw Carter on his back, on the floor, 
near the bed. Planting his left knee on the pit of Car- 
ter’s stomach, and his right on his left arm, grasping the 
other’s right wrist with his left hand, and seizing his 
throat with the right, he cried : “Carter, do you yield ? 
Yield, and you shall not be hurt. I do not hate you. I 
love you. I have got you down here to save my life. 
Promise me that you will not try to do me harm, and will 
go quietly away, and I will let you up. Will you prom- 
ise?” “No, I won’t yield to you,” he hissed, with the 
most terrible oath that Castle had ever heard. “I’ll die 
before I’ll yield; and I’ll shoot you the first chance I 
get.” 

Like a flash of lightning, Castle leaped upon Carter, 
planting himself, in a sitting posture, on his chest. Re- 
leasing Carter’s hand*,, and leaving him free to strike and 
62 


Abundant Life After Death. 

scratch as he would, he changed hands, and took him by 
the throat with his left. Then, with his right hand, he 
took from the old-fashioned bed-stead, which stood close 
by, the cord which supported the straw tick, and, with 
it, firmly bound his prisoner. It took much longer to do 
this, in the darkness, than it takes to tell it. But, at 
length, Carter was so securely pinioned that he could 
move nothing but his vocal organs, and eyes, and the 
muscles of his face, which he used most diligently in 
scowling and swearing at the innocent object of his bit- 
terest hate. 

The professor hunted around and found a lamp and 
some matches, and then, producing a light, sat down in 
a chair, near his enemy, and looked him in the face. 
As he did this, a flood of joyous emotion came rolling 
over his soul. He was happy, not because he had 
gained the victory over his mortal antagonist, but be- 
cause of the victory which God had given him over him- 
self. He did not feel the least spark of anger, or ill- 
will, toward the man who had tried to murder him. In- 
stead he felt his whole soul going out toward him in 
love and pity and longing for his salvation. 

“Carter,” said Castle, “you heard me relate my re- 
ligious experience, at the prayer meeting. If this thing 
had taken place before I received the baptism of the 
Holy Ghost, I know that I should have been so angry 
at you that I should have done to you what you tried to 
do to me; I should have thrown you out of the window. 
You are alive this minute through the grace of God, 
which has sanctified my soul. Carter, what makes you 
hate me so ? I never did you any harm. I have always 
tried to do you good. I had to report you to the faculty. 
Hobody is to blame for your expulsion but yourself. 

63 


The Victories of Wesley Castle. 

Carter, I forgive you with all my heart. I love you. 
Won’t you forsake your sins, and become a good man? 
Carter, if you will pledge me your word of honor that 
you will go quietly away and never disturb the Seminary 
again, I will unbind you, and let you go, and never tell 
anybody what has happened to-night. Will you make 
me that promise ?” 

Carter had nothing but curses and threats for the man 
who loved him so much. “I hate you. I’ll kill you,” 
were the last words, as the professor locked him in, and 
went down stairs. 

The janitor was called, and dispatched for a brace of 
constables. Carter was ironed, and taken to the village 
“cooler.” 

Before Wesley Castle went to bed that night, he 
prayed long and earnestly for his enemy. He never 
prayed more sincerely for any thing in his life, than that 
Cod would have mercy on Carter, and save his soul. 
From first to last, he had not felt the slightest shade of 
anger or resentment. He had never had a greater calm 
in his soul than he had while he was fighting that ter- 
rible battle for his life. He knew that that calm was 
supernatural in its nature and origin; it was “the peace 
of God, that passeth all understanding.” As he sunk 
into a dreamless sleep, the last word on his lips, and the 
last thought in his mind, was a the blood of Jesus Christ 
cleanseth me from all sin.” 


64 


IV. 

Called to Endure Hardness. 

There are many who believe that God speaks to men 
and women, in these days, just as really as he spoke to 
Abraham and Moses and Deborah and Samuel, in the 
ancient times. Five times in his life Wesley Castle 
seemed to hear God speaking to him in an audible voice. 
Five times God seemed to speak to his inmost soul 
through his fleshly ears. The first time was when the 
Divine Being came and stood behind his chair, in room 
No. 20, in the North Dormitory of Mount Caesar Col- 
lege, and reproved him for his lack of fidelity and forti- 
tude in the Christian life. The second time was when, 
while he was sitting in the gallery of the Methodist 
Church at Fairview, at the Sunday morning service, the 
same voice whispered in his right ear, softly but very 
distinctly “Don’t you think you ought to preach ?” 

It was only a question; but it was a tremendous one, 
and it rang through all the chambers of the young man’s 
soul. For months and months, in all his waking and 
unemployed hours, that interrogation was in his mind: 
“Don’t you think you ought to preach? Don’t you 
think you ought to preach?” After that Sunday morn- 
ing, Wesley Castle could not hear a sermon but he 
would find himself constructing a sermon on the same 
text which the preacher was using, though he had never 
done such a thing before. He could not rid himself of 
the impression that perhaps he ought to leave teaching 
and enter the ministry. And yet his reason told him 
that would be the height of folly; he was a student, but 
could never be an orator ; he had fitted himself to teach, 
65 


The Victories of Wesley Castle. 

but had never given much thought to writing and speak- 
ing; he was a good teacher, but would be a poor preacher. 
Apparently all his worldly interests lay on the side of 
continuing where he was. He could not decide what 
was his duty. He was willing to preach, if that was the 
will of God, although preaching was not his choice. 

The fact that he was willing to preach, if the Lord 
willed, increased his perplexity; for, from what he had 
read in the biographies of eminent divines, he supposed 
that one of the strongest evidences of a genuine call to 
the ministry was an intense unwillingness to preach. 
This proof of a divine call to preach he certainly did not 
possess. 

There is something very peculiar, and something very 
divine, about a real call to the gospel ministry. A 
Christian can go into the practice of law, feeling that it 
would be no sin for him to be a physician, or an en- 
gineer, or a merchant, or a farmer. He chooses the 
law for himself and of himself ; and his choice is based 
on his own tastes and judgment, and on the judgment 
of his friends. He becomes a lawyer because he prefers 
the law to all other professions and occupations. 

But a young man receives a Scriptural call to the 
ministry. He becomes a minister not because he pre- 
fers that occupation to all others — perhaps it is the very 
last which he would choose; not because he considers 
himself adapted to that work — perhaps he seems to him- 
self to be utterly unfitted for the pulpit; not because his 
friends advise him to preach — perhaps they prophesy 
his utter failure. But he goes into the ministry because 
he hears God’s voice in his inmost soul, saying : “Go, 
preach my gospel;” because he is impressed that it would 
be a sin for him to be a lawyer, or a teacher, or a farmer, 

66 


Called to Endure Hardness. 

or any thing but a preacher; because he feels as Paul 
did, when he said : “Necessity is laid on me, yea, woe 
is unto me, if I preach not the gospel.” 

When God calls a man to the ministry, he makes that 
his life work, in such a sense that it would be wrong and 
a grievous sin for him to follow any other occupation. 
When the Almighty calls a man to preach, he makes suc- 
cess in any other pursuit an impossibility. When the 
Infinite One selects a man to be his ambassador, and 
sets his mark upon him, he can never again be just what 
he was before. 

Full of doubt and uncertainty as to what duty was, 
Prof. Wesley Castle lived on for nearly a year, keeping 
his tormenting thoughts to himself. When he could en- 
dure them no longer, he poured them into the ear of his 
pastor, the Rev. Hannibal Williams. He advised the 
professor to try preaching, and see how he might feel. 
“We are almost at the end of the year,” said the min- 
ister. “I intend to hold a watch-night service. I shall 
preach, and I want some one else to deliver a discourse. 
You have no license to preach. But that makes no dif- 
ference. I will give notice that Prof. Castle will preach, 
at eleven o’clock. That will draw in the students, and 
hold them till the closing exercises, at mid-night, which 
are always very impressive.” Prof. Castle was never 
certain whether the Rev. Hannibal Williams made the 
appointment for him to preach at the watch meeting 
solely to help a young man to decide the awfully im- 
portant question of what his life work should be, or, 
largely, to help himself in running a four-hour service 
and in filling up the time. 

But Prof. Castle preached, or tried to. He took a 
text, and did the best he could. Nearly all the teachers 
67 


The Victories of Wesley Castle. 

and students from the Seminary were present. The 
preacher had some liberty and satisfaction; hut said to 
himself, when he sat down: “I have convinced my 
hearers that, if I leave teaching to go into preaching, I 
shall spoil a good teacher to make a poor preacher.” 

That first attempt to preach took place four months 
before the experimenting preacher received the baptism 
of the Holy Ghost, and while he was a most earnest 
seeker for that supreme blessing. Afterward he preached 
several times in school houses, out in the country. Hot 
long after he received an Exhorter’s license. About two 
months after “that illustrious day,” the 9th of May, 
when all heaven seemed to come down into his little 
room, at Fairview Seminary, he was made a Local 
Preacher in the Methodist Episcopal Church. 

Thereafter he had frequent invitations to preach, the 
acceptance of which brought a good degree of satisfac- 
tion to his soul. Gradually the question : “Don’t you 
think you ought to preach ?” began to assume the form 
of an affirmation: “You ought to preach;” and still 
he could hardly tell whether the “don’t you think” was 
left off, or not. He often said to himself: “I would 
give worlds, if I had them, to know just what my duty 
is.” 

At length — it would be difficult to tell how, but 
providentially there is reason to believe — Prof. Wesley 
Castle was led to resign his position in Fairview Semin- 
ary and to join the Conference, and to take an appoint- 
ment as pastor of a charge. It was the poorest appoint- 
ment in all the Conference. But he went to it feeling 
that it was good enough. He was contented and happy. 
The great question whether he should preach was settled 
at last, and he was at rest. And yet he was not wholly 
68 


Called to Endure Hardness. 

at rest every moment. The fear that he had made a 
mistake frequently came up in his mind to torment him. 
Of this, however, he was sure: it was not the love of 
self, or of position, or of money which had moved him to 
do as he had done; for, when he made up his mind to 
join the Conference, he had a letter in his pocket offering 
him a professorship of Greek in a college in the state of 
Ohio, with three hours work a day, and a salary of 
twelve hundred dollars. 

The name of Wesley Castle’s first charge was Little- 
field. It was a circuit, named from the village where 
the parsonage was located. There were three preaching 
places — Littlefield, Sing Sing and Yoorhes Hill. At 
Littlefield the minister preached in a church every Sun- 
day morning and evening. At the out-appointments he 
preached, alternate Sunday afternoons, in school houses. 

Littlefield was a wretched little tumble-down village. 
In all that region of country it went by the name of 
Slab City. There was not a house within its limits 
which had received a coat of paint within the last 
fifteen years, except the parsonage, which had recently 
been painted a dirty yellow. The church edifice was an 
old-fashioned structure, with a high pulpit at the front 
end, and a gallery running entirely around. Its inner 
walls were festooned with cobwebs and tatters of paper 
hangings. The floor was bare. The roof was leaky. 
Huge patches of plastering had fallen from the ceiling. 
Cracked and rusty stoves stood in the corners, on both 
sides of the pulpit. And a general air of dilapidation 
and decay pervaded the place. The oldest inhabitant 
declared that he could remember when there was a little 
trace of paint on the outside of the ancient structure; 
but not the faintest sign of any such thing was visible 
69 


The Victories of Wesley Castle. 

when Wesley Castle first gazed upon those grim and 
frowning walls. 

The little, old, yellow parsonage deserves more than 
a passing notice. It stood, or rather sat, without any 
underpinning, right on the ground, six feet from the 
street, and two feet below, with its broad side toward the 
same. Whenever there was a hard rain, the water and 
filth from the high-way, unless strenuously opposed, 
would pour down, through the front door, into the main 
room of the edifice, which served as sitting-room, dining- 
room, kitchen and bed-room. Beside this, there were 
two rooms on the ground floor and one above. The 
ceilings were so low that our six-foot preacher could lay 
the flat of his hand upon them, and have several inches 
to spare. The front door had no latch. So the preacher 
made one out of a long piece of hard wood. When put 
in its place, it reached from the catch to the middle of 
the door, where a screw held it, and permitted it to rise 
and fall. As there was no thumb-piece, with which to 
raise the latch from the outside, the amateur architect 
cut a long strip of leather from an old boot leg, fastened 
one end to the latch and stuck the other through a hole 
which he bored in the door. In the day time the latch- 
string hung out, inviting the passer-by to enter. At 
night the door was secured by pulling in the string. 

In this hovel — for that is all it was — the Castles en- 
sconced themselves, with their few belongings, determ- 
ined to be happy and not to let the people know that 
they cared for anything better. 

The new preacher got himself into trouble the first 
time he preached at Littlefield. His text was : “Where- 
fore he is able also to save them to the uttermost that 
come unto God by him.” He undertook to show what 
70 


Called to Endure Hardness. 

the uttermost salvation is. It includes pardon for all 
sins. When God forgives a man his sins, he forgives 
them all, all at once; and the man is as innocent as 
though he had never sinned. Then he, at the same time, 
gives him a new heart, so that he hates sin, and loves 
righteousness, and has strength to do right and live with- 
out the commission of known sin. Then the uttermost 
salvation includes adoption. He who was a child of the 
devil is now a child of God and a member of the Roval 
Family of heaven. Along with adoption comes the 
Spirit of adoption. “The Spirit itself bears witness with 
our spirit that we are the children of God : and if chib 
dren, then heirs; heirs of God and joint heirs with 
Christ.” The uttermost salvation includes entire sancti- 
fication. If a man who has received pardon and a new 
heart and adoption and the witness of the Spirit walks 
in the light, doing every duty and yielding himself up to 
every good influence, he will, ere long, discover that 
there are evil things still remaining in his heart; not 
sins, for he is kept from sinning by the power of God, 
but sin, the roots of sins to which he was once a slave, 
the sin principle which he inherited from fallen Adam. 
Then he will cry to God for perfect cleansing, and, 
plunging anew into the fountain filled with Immanuel’s 
blood, will come forth washed whiter than snow, cleansed 
from all evil passions, from all leanings toward sinning, 
from the least and last remains of the carnal mind. En- 
tire sanctification includes complete deliverance from un- 
natural appetites. Then the preacher related the experi- 
ence of a friend of his who had been a slave to the 
tobacco appetite and habit, but had been delivered in a 
moment, in answer to prayer, and by the sanctifying 
power of the Holy Spirit, so that he loathed with all his 
71 


The Victories of Wesley Castle. 

soul what before was as dear as his life. 

Such was the plan of the first sermon which Wesley 
Castle preached after he joined Conference. He thought 
that it was a sound gospel discourse. He had great lib- 
erty in preaching. And there were several good, hearty 
amens from different parts of the house. 

But in reality, though the preacher did not suspect 
it, that innocent, gospel sermon produced a great com- 
motion. In the first place, many of the hearers took 
great offense at the idea that Almighty God can keep a 
soul that trusts in him from committing sin. They were 
very much displeased at the preacher because he wanted 
to rob them of their God-given right to commit sin. 
Then many others hated the word “Sanctification.” 
They could not find any such word in their Bible, and 
they did not believe that there was any such thing. But 
the real harm which that sermon did was far beyond all 
that. 

The village of Littlefield stood in a long, but not very 
wide, valley, whose deep and fertile soil was admirably 
adapted to the growth of the tobacco plant. For a mile 
and a half east and west, and for ten miles north and 
south, tobacco was almost the only crop which was raised. 
It was immensely profitable. At the time of our story 
tobacco was worth, in the farmer’s shed, twenty-five 
cents a pound; and many of the farmers were getting 
fifty, and even seventy-five, dollars clear profit, over and 
above the cost of tillage, from every acre planted with 
the Indian weed. One man, Solon Silsbee, the only per- 
son in all the valley who seemed to have a real wide- 
awake conscience, actually refused three hundred dollars 
for the use of four acres of very choice land, for one 
year, to be devoted to tobacco. Everybody said : 

72 


Called to Endure Hardness. 

“Solon Silsbee is a queer old bachelor. You never can 
tell what he is going to do; only — they added, in a half 
whisper — you can’t get him to do anything which he 
thinks is wrong.” 

Tobacco was making the farmers rich very fast. The 
richer they got, the richer they wanted to be. Tobacco 
was their god. With insignificant exceptions, they 
raised nothing but tobacco; they talked about nothing 
but tobacco; they thought about nothing but tobacco; 
they dreamed about nothing but tobacco. It was to- 
bacco seven days in the week. Some worked in their 
tobacco fields on Sunday. Others spent the holy day 
walking around through their tobacco fields, worshiping 
the bad-smelling god. The best of them talked about 
their tobacco crop, on the way to church; thought about 
their tobacco crop during the service; and conversed 
about their tobacco crops, out in the horse^sheds, while 
the women and children, and the minister, were in Sun- 
day-school. 

Of course the religion of those tobacco-raising farmers 
was, for the most part, nothing but a lifeless form. It 
ought to be stated, however, that there were a few pious 
people in the village who had no land on which to raise 
tobacco, or anything else; and there were several farm- 
ers on the hills who raised corn and hay and potatoes 
and oats, instead of tobacco, who had the real religion 
and knew what salvation means. 

The richest man in all the valley was Martin Jackson. 
He did not belong to the Church; but his wife did; and 
he was a trustee. He was at church that morning, to 
hear the new preacher. He liked the sermon well 
enough till the preacher told the story about the man 
whom the Lord saved from the love of tobacco. He did 
73 


The Victories of Wesley Castle. 

not like that a bit. Indeed he got very angry. He 
stayed through the service, for the anti-tobacco story was 
almost the last thing; but he went out, after the bene- 
diction, with maledictions on his tongue, declaring that 
the preacher told that story on purpose to insult him; 
that he would never hear him preach again, not even at 
a funeral; and that the Church should never have a 
cent of his money, as long as it kept such a fool as that 
for a pastor. Most of the church people were badly 
frightened. “The Church will surely go to pieces now,” 
they thought, and some of them said: “We can’t get 
along without Mr. Jackson’s money and influence. O, 
why didn’t that foolish preacher know enough to keep 
his mouth shut about tobacco? He’s a smart fellow, 
away ahead of the ministers we have usually had. But 
he never can do any good on this charge. Why didn’t 
he preach against Mormonism, or murdering little 
babies in India, or binding the feet of little girls in 
China?” And so a storm of indignation was raised 
against the unsuspecting preacher because he preached 
a sermon which had reference to persons living in this 
nineteenth century and in this republic of the United 
States. 

The next evening an official meeting was held at the 
parsonage. One ignorant denizen of Littlefield called 
it “an artificial meeting at the passenger house.” After 
prayer, the pastor stated the special object of the meet- 
ing to be to consider the subject of repairing and beauti- 
fying the house of God at Littlefield. The brethren 
gazed at him in astonishment. If he had proposed that 
they should all fly to the moon, they could not have 
been much more surprised. He told them that his plan 
was to paint the outside, replacing the rotten clapboards 
74 


Called to Endure Hardness. 

wherever necessary; entirely renovate the interior, fresco- 
ing the walls, carpeting the floor, putting in new pews, 
replacing the old stoves in the corners with furnaces in 
the cellar; procure a first-class cabinet organ, or vocal- 
ion; and hang a bell in the tower. He said that he had 
made an estimate that the whole could be done for three 
thousand dollars. 

One of the brethren asked : “Where in the world do 
you think the money is coming from to do all that?” 
“Out of your pockets, of course,” coolly answered the 
pastor. “You don’t know how poor we are, in this val- 
ley,” was the response. “If Littlefield were a big city, 
perhaps such a thing could be done.” In his estimation 
the building of Solomon’s Temple was nothing, com- 
pared with the scheme proposed by the Rev. Wesley 
Castle. 

Immediately the preacher found out where he was, 
and what difficulties were before him. A man who sat 
in the corner, whom the pastor had not seen before, 
spoke up, in a very gruff voice : “Elder, if you hadn’t 
drove the richest man we have out of the church yester- 
day by your preaching, we might fix up the old tumbled- 
down meeting house. But we can’t do anything with- 
out Martin Jackson,” “You lie,” yelled a man from 
the other side of the room. In an instant John Church- 
ill and Simeon Perkins met in the middle of the floor, 
with eyes darting fire, and fists almost touching each 
other’s noses. “Call me a liar again,” said Churchill, 
the man who had sat in the corner, “and I will knock 
you down.” “You are a liar,” answered Perkins, “and 
I can prove it.” Churchill drew back his first to strike. 
Instantly the young athlete, the pastor, was between 
them, with one hand on the shoulder of each, and each 
75 


The Victories of Wesley Castle. 

at the end of one of his extended arms. “Gentlemen,” 
he said with the most perfect calmness, and yet in a tone 
which could not be misunderstood, “you cannot fight 
in my house. If you must fight, go out in the street.” 
“I beg your pardon, Elder,” said Churchill, “but if he’ll 
come out doors, I’ll thrash him to within an inch of his 
life.” With those words on his lips, he instantly left the 
house. That was the end of the first official meeting 
which Wesley Castle ever attended. Surely it was a 
rough initiation for a young preacher. 

Why those two men were so ready to fight ought to 
be known. They had been enemies for many years — ene- 
mies and rivals. Both wanted to run the church. And 
beside they had had business troubles. Each accused 
the other of lying and cheating. Churchill had been a 
very wicked man before his conversion, if indeed he 
had ever been converted. Perkins was a well-meaning 
man, and a true friend of the Church. He had a genu- 
ine religious experience. But he was head-strong, and 
ignorant, and willful, and, worst of all, had a most un- 
governable and unsanctified temper. He was notorious 
for this, and often brought great disgrace on the cause of 
religion by his sudden and awful tempests of anger. He 
was generally sorry afterward, and sometimes very 
penitent and humble. But, although he believed in 
growing in grace, and had a great deal to say on that 
subject, he did not grow any more meek and gentle and 
Christlike, but rather the reverse; as the years went by 
— so his brethren said — his temper seemed to grow more 
violent and uncontrollable. He did not like what the 
new preacher said that morning, about sanctification. 
He told his wife, on the way home, that he didn’t believe 
anybody could get sanctified in a minute ; he believed in 
76 


Called to Endure Hardness. 

growing better and better, till tbe sin was all grown out 
of bis heart. He did not believe that bis tobacco plants 
could grow tbe weeds out of tbe field; for be dug, or 
pulled, up every one he could find. But he did think 
that the graces of the Spirit in his heart could grow out 
the weeds of sin and carnality. And yet he was a stand- 
ing example of how men do not get sanctified by growth. 
He had been a member of the Church, and a Christian, 
for twenty-five years ; and his wife declared (and nobody 
knew better than she) that he was just as quick-tem- 
pered and willful as he was the day after his conversion, 
and even more so. 

Some one may wonder why Simeon Perkins called 
John Churchill a liar so quick, when the latter said: 
“We can’t do anything without Martin Jackson.” Per- 
kins did not like Jackson, and did not think that the 
Church ought to be dependent an an ungodly man. 
With all his faults, he loved the Church; he was a lib- 
eral giver; he wanted the old meeting house fixed up, 
and believed that it could be ; he liked the new preacher, 
though he did not like “his new-fangled notions” about 
sanctification. He liked the new preacher and stood by 
him through thick and thin, as long as he was on the 
charge. 

Wesley said nothing more about repairing the church, 
except to individuals privately. As he went around 
over the charge he took a subscription book with him, 
and almost every day got one name or several, with 
larger or smaller figures placed opposite. 

Meanwhile he kept steadily on preaching the truth 
as he understood it. Most of the people at Littlefield 
heard him with pleasure, though many had cold chills 
run up and down their backs whenever he said anything 
77 


The Victories of Wesley Castle. 

about sanctification, or perfect love, or the Holy Ghost. 
As for the preacher himself, he had, at times, terrible 
conflicts and doubts. He thought that perhaps he had 
mistaken his calling “O,” he said to himself, “if I 
could only know, beyond a doubt !” Afterward he could 
see that, during those first months God was doing his 
best to make him know that the ministry was his place. 
The great Head of the Church wonderfully blessed him 
in his work, and gave him many souls; and yet he 
doubted. His doubts were not sinful; but they were 
very distressing. Almost every time he went into the 
pulpit, in that old church, to preach, his soul would be 
full of glory. As he stepped up into the pulpit, it would 
seem just as though could see the Lord Jesus sitting 
there on that old black, hair-cloth sofa; and when he 
stood up to preach, the Savior would stand up behind 
him, throw his arms of love and power around him, and 
hold him up, till he sat down, when the sermon ended, 
overwhelemed with wonder and joy. And still he 
doubted. He was not absolutely sure that he had not 
made a mistake in entering the ministry, till he had been 
in the pastorate more than half a year. 

Something ought to be put on record concerning the 
two school-house appointments. Sing Sing was over the 
hill to the southeast, in a deep hollow. The people were 
poor, living, for the most part, on barren, stony farms. 
They worshipped in a wretched little school-house. But 
they were good. Those who professed religion were 
consistent Christians They were pious. They knew 
the Lord. Many of them were filled with the Holy 
* Ghost. They were united among themselves. They 
had the respect of the outside community. They main- 
tained a flourishing Sunday-school all the year through; 

78 


Called to Endure Hardness. 

and a prayer meeting every Wednesday evening. Their 
Sunday afternoon meetings were always seasons of 
power. They could sing. They could pray. They 
could testify. They could shout. There was not one 
dumb one among them. The little school-house was 
always as full as it could well hold; and the very atmos- 
phere seemed to be surcharged with divine electricity. 
Wesley Castle always found it a perfect delight to preach 
in the Sing Sing school-house. He did not have to make 
any effort to preach there, except to leave off; as the 
boy said about whistling, it preached itself. Frequently 
he would get so blessed while making the opening- 
prayer, or reading the Scripture lesson, or giving out the 
first hymn, that he could hardly contain himself; he 
would have to stop and say: “praise the Lord” a dozen 
times, or weep out his joy for several minutes, before he 
could go on with the service. He often got wonderfully 
blessed just as soon as he crossed the threshold and en- 
tered that heavenly atmosphere, which always seemed to 
linger about the place. He hardly ever preached there 
without seeing somebody converted ere the service 
closed. Years afterward he declared that he had never 
enjoyed preaching in any place as much as in that little 
Sing Sing school-house. The first time he preached at 
Sing Sing he had hardly got started when he heard some- 
body, at the right and behind him, laughing very heart- 
ily. “Ha! ha! ha! ha!” It greatly disconcerted him. He 
did not know what to make of it. His first thought was 
that somebody was making fun of his poor attempt 
to preach. But he soon said to himself, “no one would 
be so unkind as to laugh at a poor fellow because he • 
don’t know how to preach. It must be that that is his way 
of expressing his religious emotion.” And so it was. 

79 


The Victories of Wesley Castle. 

After the service was over some brother came to the 
preacher and said : “You must not mind Father Axtell. 
When he gets happy he always laughs.” Blessed old 
saint ! Everybody respected and loved him. The 
preacher soon came to enjoy that laugh. Sometimes 
Father Axtell was too sick, or feeble, to come to meet- 
ing. Then the preacher missed the laugh, and felt that 
something was wanting, and did not have as good a time 
as usual. It was not Father Axtell that laughed; it was 
the Holy Ghost that laughed through his blessed face 
and lips. Would to God that all his people were so 
“filled with joy, and with the Holy Ghost” that they 
could laugh as that old saint did. 

Voorhes Hill was the exact opposite, in every respect, 
of Sing Sing. The school-house was much larger and 
better. The farms were more fertile. The people were 
more numerous and in far better circumstances. But 
they were a worldly, wicked, godless set. Drinking 
hard cider, dancing-parties, kissing-bees, cock-fighting, 
carting milk to the cheese factory on Sunday, Sunday 
visiting, and using coarse, vulgar and profane language 
were so common that everybody seemed to think that 
they were necessary and right. The church members 
were a little company, divided among themselves. There 
was hardly one of them that had any knowledge of ex- 
perimental religion, unless it was a dim memory of a 
long-lost treasure. With one or two possible exceptions, 
they were false professors or backsliders. The new 
preacher soon found out that preaching on Voorhes 
Hill was like drawing a loaded sled over bare ground. 
It was almost impossible to preach at all. The place was 
so cold, spiritually, that he could seem to see his words 
turning into frozen vapor, as they came out of his mouth. 

80 


Called to Endure Hardness. 

He would struggle and strive and agonize to preach, 
and feel utterly exhausted when he had finished. The 
very same sermon which he had preached the Sunday 
before at Sing Sing, preached at Voorhes Hill, would 
be as different as the singing of a nightingale is different 
from the croaking of a frog. The singing of the Voor- 
hes people was “Hark from the tombs ! a doleful 
sound.” They could not sing. There was no sing in 
their hearts. The Holy Ghost, the Spirit of song, had 
not been on that hill for years. How could they sing? 
There was not one among them that could start a hymn. 
The preacher had to start his own hymns. The first time 
he tried to do it, he got confused and sang the first three 
stanzas in as many different tunes. 

The Voorhes Hill folks took a dislike to the new 
preacher the first time they heard him. They discov- 
ered, almost instantly, that he belonged to a different 
tribe from themselves. They soon came to hate him. 
And yet, as they said, he was such a “smart preacher, so 
far ahead of anything they had ever had on that hill,” 
that they could hardly help coming to hear him ; and the 
school-house was full every time Elder Castle, as they 
called him, preached there. 

There were many reasons why the Voorhes Hill peo- 
ple hated Wesley Castle. In the first place, he did not 
flatter them. He wa3 too much of a Christian and a gen- 
tleman to flatter anybody. Flattery is a sin. The flat- 
terer sins against himself, against his victim and against 
God. The last pastor was a great flatterer. He told the 
Voorhes-Hillites that they were the best people he had 
ever known. The new preacher told them the truth. 
He said nothing harsh. He always spoke in love. He 
noticed everybody. He visited around among them 
81 


The Victories of Wesley Castle. 

more, they said themselves, than any other minister 
they had ever had; but he committed the unpardonable 
sin of telling them the truth. He loved them so much 
that he could not help telling them the truth. Instead of 
preaching against the sins committed in Salt Lake City 
and ancient Sodom, he preached against the sins com- 
mitted on Voorhes Hill. He preached against drinking 
cider, against Sunday visiting (the Sunday he was not 
there, the school-house was closed; there was no Sunday- 
school; and all classes went in for a good, jolly time of 
fun and merry-making), against worldliness, against all 
the evil practices of that neighborhood. 

That in Wesley Castle’s preaching which caused the 
greatest offense was the oft-repeated, and Bible-proved, 
doctrine that a man cannot be a Christian and live in 
sin. If he had not proved it from the Bible, it would not 
have been so bad. But to prove from the word of God 
that a man cannot be a Christian and continually do the 
things he knows to be wrong, was perfectly horrible. 
Such preaching they could not, and would not, endure. 
They called it holiness. They said that Elder Castle was 
a holiness crank; that he preached holiness every time he 
came on the hill. But he told them that he had never 
preached them a holiness sermon ; that they had not got- 
ten far enough along for that sort of preaching; that it 
was nothing but justification that he was preaching. He 
told them as plainly as he could, but lovingly, with tears 
in his heart, if not in his eyes, that, if they were doing 
every day what they knew to be wrong, they were in 
the broad road to hell, and not in the narrow way to 
heaven. 

Wesley Castle’s unpopularity on Voorhes Hill grew 
and flourished very rapidly. And still, strange as it 
82 


Called to Endure Hardness. 

may seem, the ones who hated him the most fiercely 
always came to hear him preach. The leading men and 
women in the Church got so that they would hardly 
speak to their pastor, and they would glare at him, when 
he was preaching, as though they were wild beasts. He 
soon came to feel that he had not a single friend on all 
that hill. Still he labored on, longing and weeping and 
praying and agonizing, and feeling that he could gladly 
die, for the salvation of men and women who hated him 
almost enough to treat him as the J ews treated his divine 
Master. 

One Sunday, when it was his turn to preach at Voor- 
hes Hill, he got a local preacher from a neighboring 
charge to fill his pulpit at Littlefield in the evening, and 
gave notice that he would stay and preach a second dis- 
course to the Hill people. The house was crowded. He 
had good liberty in preaching — that is, good for that 
place. His text was: “Choose ye this day whom ye 
will serve.” He poured the truth red-hot upon pro- 
fessed sinners and professed Christians. He could see 
that they were very angry. But he kept on, till he had 
said all that he thought the Lord would have him say. 
As he drove away from the school-house, after the ser- 
vice, a crowd of men and boys, some of them church 
members, jeered at him and called him insulting names. 

Something else was in store for him. While he was 
preaching, some fellow, instigated by a member of the 
Church, went out to the horse-shed and cut the hold- 
back straps to his buggy. The horse which he drove 
belonged to Brother Simeon Perkins, and was very 
spirited and nervous. The night was moonless, and the 
stars were hidden by clouds, so that the driver could 
hardly see to keep the road. For about half a mile the 
83 


The Victories of Wesley Castle. 

road ran along a perfectly level space. The servant of 
God crossed this at a lively trot, thanking God, as he 
spun along, that he had given him such a measure of 
the Holy Spirit’s sanctifying power that he could rejoice 
in the midst of persecution, and pray for his enemies. 

The half mile came to a sudden end, at the top of a 
very steep hill. As soon as the descent began, the 
heavy buggy plunged, forward and downward, upon the 
horse’s heels, and the frightened animal began to kick 
as violently as the steepness of the road would permit. 
In vain the driver shouted “whoa,” and pulled the lines. 
He might as well have tried to stop a whirl-wind. It 
was a dreadful moment. A skittish, frightened horse, 
running away, on a dark night, down the steepest hill in 
all that hilly country! With death staring him in the 
face, Wesley Castle did not lose the divine calm out of his 
soul. He was not afraid to die. But it seemed to him 
that his work on earth was not ended; and he cried to 
God for help. 

Suddenly the king-bolt of the buggy broke. The 
driver felt the seat give way beneath him. Clinging to 
the lines, the horse was dragging him, with the forward 
wheels, down the hill, at a terrific speed. The next in- 
stant darkness gathered over his bewildered brain; and 
Wesley Castle lay, bruised, bleeding, mangled, uncon- 
scious, on the hard and stony ground. 


84 


y. 


Fully Armed and Equipped. 

Simeon Perkins sat in the kitchen, that Sunday night, 
reading The Christian Advocate and waiting for his 
Pastor to return with the horse. On the table stood a 
lighted lantern, ready to guide his steps to the carriage 
house and stable. Just as the clock struck ten, he heard 
the wished-for sound. But there was something about it 
which he did not like. The horse was galloping up the 
lane from the highway as no man would ever drive in a 
buggy. Something surely was the matter. Seizing the 
lantern and running out into the night, he found the 
horse standing at the stable door, trembling in every 
limb, covered with foam and sweat and dust, without 
the buggy and with only part of the harness dragging on 
the ground. A closer inspection revealed the startling 
fact that a sharp knife had severed both the hold-back 
straps. Instantly the shrewd, practical mind of farmer 
Perkins understood what had taken place. “The mur- 
derous villains!” he exclaimed. “A meaner and more 
venomous nest of rattlesnakes than those Voorheshillites 
cannot be found on the face of the earth. I told the 
Elder that it was not safe for him to go up there in the 
night. I told him that they hated him bad enough to 
kill him; and that they were wicked enough to kill him 
if they dared. This very minute he is lying dead or 
badly injured, somewhere on that first hill this side of the 
school-house.” 

Having put the run-away horse into his accustomed 
stall, he led out his fleetest and most trusty span, hastily 
threw their harnesses upon them and hitched them to the 
85 


The Victories of Wesley Castle. 

new “democrat.” Calling his wife, who had retired for 
the night, he had her help him prepare a bed, consisting 
of a soft hair-mattress and sheets and blankets and pil- 
lows, and place it in the long, wide box of the wagon. 
Then, springing into the seat, he drove swiftly away. 
As the spirited steeds flew along the road toward the vil- 
lage, farmer Perkins said to himself : “The Elder is 
badly hurt, if he is not killed. He’ll need something to 
bring him to his senses and make him comfortable while 
I’m bringing him home over the rough road.” Just then 
he was opposite the home of Doctor Bass. A light was 
shining through the office window. Three minutes 
sufficed to make the kind-hearted physician understand 
the situation, and to get him into the wagon with his 
medicine-case and every other needful thing. The next 
light they saw shone out of the parsonage windows, where 
the preacher’s little wife sat, studying the next Sun- 
day-school lesson and waiting for her husband’s return.” 
“I’ll stop and break the news to Sister Castle,” said 
Brother Perkins. “We may bring back her husband’s 
corpse; and that’ll kill her sure, unless she has time to 
get ready to stand the blow.” When Farmer Perkins and 
Dr. Bass drove away from the door of the little old, 
yellow parsonage, Mrs. Castle was on her knees, crying 
to God in an agony of prayer. 

As the men drove rapidly along through the darkness, 
Dr. Bass said to his companion : “I think your minister 
is a very fine man. There was never so able and eloquent 
a preacher in this place before. He is worthy to fill the 
best pulpit in the largest city. But I think he is foolish 
to preach the way he does. He is getting everybody 
down on him. His rule seems to be to find out just what 
sins his people commit the most, and then to fire away at 
86 


Fully Armed and Equipped. 

those sins with all his might. If I were a preacher, I 
would take the opposite course. I would find out the 
darling sins of my hearers, and then I would preach 
soft on those sins, or let them alone altogether, and make 
them think that I was brave by blazing away tremend- 
ously at the sins of the folks over on the other side of the 
ocean. I would find out what the people want, and then 
give it to them in big doses. Did you ever hear the story 
of the minister who agreed to take his pay for preaching 
in rye? Well, he was a sort of a played-out preacher. 
You Methodists call them Superannuated, or Locust 
Preachers, or Exhausters, or something of that kind. 
He was that kind of a preacher, and he was willing to 
preach cheap. There was an old abandoned church off 
on the hill, among the farmers, and he agreed to preach 
for so many bushels of rye a year. When he had 
preached a few Sundays, he noticed that his congrega- 
tion was falling off, and he got frightened. So, one day, 
meeting one of the farmers in town, he said: ‘What’s 
the matter with the folks up there? They don’t turn 
out to meeting very well. Don’t they like my doctrine ? 
What do they want? I’ll preach any doctrine they 
want, if they’ll only let me know what it is ; for I must 
have that rye.’ How, if I were a preacher, I would do 
like that old fellow ; I would find out what kind of doc- 
trine the people want, and then I would preach it to 
them. I know what is the matter on the hill. Elder 
Castle preaches against drinking hard cider, and fighting 
roosters, and going visiting on Sunday, and lying about 
their neighbors. They don’t like that; and I shouldn’t 
think they would. I am up there often, and they tell 
me all about it. I don’t believe the Elder has a single 
friend there. They say he preaches holiness all the 
87 


The Victories of Wesley Castle. 

time. I don’t know what that means exactly; only it is 
something which is not very plenty on V oorhes Hill. If 
your preacher is alive, and gets well, you would better 
advise him to pull in his horns and not be so hard on 
the people.” Brother Perkins did not make much an- 
swer to the doctor’s words. About all he said was: 
“I’ve told him so; but he says he’s got to give account 
to the Almighty for the way he preaches, and that he’s 
going to preach the whole truth, whether it does any 
good or not, and whether the people love him or kill 
him.” 

By the time this conversation had ended, the team was 
at the bottom of the hill where the run-away had taken 
place. Simeon Perkins had driven thus far without 
making any examination by the way, because his judg- 
ment told him that the preacher must have been thrown 
from the wagon not far from the top of the hill. Now 
he jumped from the wagon seat, with the lantern in his 
hand, and began walking up the hill, swinging the light 
before him, while the doctor drove slowly along behind. 
Soon they heard a series of groans over on the left. A 
few seconds later the light was shining on a man sitting 
in the ditch. As the farmer and the physician drew 
near, they recognized Wesley Castle. As they held the 
lantern close to his face, he looked up at them in a dazed, 
half -conscious stare, and repeated the text from which 
he had been preaching, two hours before : “Choose ye 
this day whom ye will serve.” The Doctor proceeded at 
once to make an examination. There was an ugly wound 
in the head, from which the blood had been flowing pro- 
fusely. Whether the skull was injured, or not, he could 
not tell; but he feared that it was. The right arm was 
broken below the elbow; and the left leg, below the 
88 


Fully Armed and Equipped. 

knee. The good Samaritans procured some water from a 
little rill which was singing dolefully by the road-side, 
washed away the blood, bound up the head and lifted the 
sufferer gently upon the bed in the wagon. As they 
laid him on the mattress, he seemed to think that his 
sermon was ended, and he began to offer the closing 
prayer. With the most tender pathos, and in words 
which drew tears even from the doctor’s eyes, he invoked 
the richest blessings of heaven on the heads of his ene- 
mies and persecutors. He did not pray for them as 
though they were persecuting him; for he did not seem 
to know that anything had happened — evidently he 
thought that he was kneeling by the side of the teacher’s 
desk in the school-house. Then, after a moment’s pause, 
he began another prayer. He poured out his soul to 
God for Littlefield Church and people. He prayed that 
all the people of God might be sanctified wholly; that 
the formal professors might become real possessors of the 
saving grace of Christ; that the wanderers might be re- 
claimed; that the Holy Spirit might be poured out, in 
convicting energy, on all the unsaved; and that scores 
and hundreds of sinners might be converted to God. He 
did not pray very loud, for he was too weak for that. 
But he did pray with marvelous unction and power; 
and the two men who sat on the seat, as the wagon 
moved slowly along over the rough road, wept like chil- 
dren, and the doctor said that he never heard anybody 
pray like that before, in all his life. Long years after, 
when he had become an earnest Spirit-filled Christian, he 
traced his conviction and conversion to that prayer. It is 
recorded in the annals of the kingdom of heaven that a 
mighty, sweeping revival, which visited Littlefield and 
the surrounding country, many months after, was born, 
89 


The Victories of Wesley Castle. 

that night, in the. heart of that bruised and half-dead 
preacher, and in the prayer which the Holy Ghost 
breathed through his lips. 

At midnight Wesley Castle was in his bed, at home, 
with his wounds dressed, his fractured bones set and in 
splints, with consciousness fully restored, with his wife 
bending lovingly over him, and with but little pain in 
his body, and with the unutterable peace and joy of God 
in his soul. 

The news of the outrage inflicted on the preacher in 
charge of Littlefield Circuit filled all that region with 
horror and indignation. There were exceptions, how- 
ever. While nine out of every ten were loud in their 
denunciations of the intended murder, and no one dared 
openly even to excuse it, there were many, especially on 
Voorhes Hill, who were glad in their hearts that the 
meddlesome preacher, who did not know enough to mind 
his own business, and wanted everybody to be so awfully 
good, had got punished for his folly and impudence. 
Their consciences were the more inclined to tolerate 
them in cherishing those feelings because he had not 
been killed. If any thoughts of pity came into their 
minds, they drove them out with the reflection, “Well, 
he’s alive. He ought not to complain. He ought to be 
satisfied with that. He got no more than he deserved. 
He’s learned a valuable lesson, which will do him good 
as long as he lives.” But the great mass of the people, 
including some on Voorhes Hill, were genuinely indig- 
nant that such barbarism should break out in a civilized 
country, and declared that the perpetrators and invent- 
ors should be hunted out, and punished to the utmost limit 
of the law. Many who had not been inside a church in 
years declared that they admired that kind of a preacher, 
90 


Fully Armed and Equipped. 

and that, if he lived to preach again, they would certain- 
ly go and hear him. The saints at Sing Sing believed 
that the persecution of their beloved pastor, who, they 
were assured from heaven, would fully recover, was one 
part of God’s plan for a mighty revival, which would, ere 
long, sweep over all that region of country. 

The next two or three months the latch-string of the 
little yellow parsonage at Slab City was pulled so fre- 
quently that Mrs. Castle thought she would have to try 
her hand at making a new one. Every few minutes by 
day, and every hour far into the night, some one would 
come to ask how the Elder was getting along, or to bring 
something good to eat for the invalid or his wife. She 
was his only nurse. He did not need much nursing. 
His constitution was so firm, his blood was so pure and 
all the organs of his body were in such perfect health 
that about all he required was perfect quiet, while the 
wounded tissue was healing and the broken bones were 
knitting. He wanted his wife to sit by his bed all day 
and talk or read. Though the patient had some pain and 
much weariness, those were delightful days, and both 
the preacher and his wife spoke of them, in after years, 
as among the brightest and most profitable of their lives. 

One day, while Mrs. Castle was reading to her hus- 
band from the Life of Bishop Hamline, a knock was 
heard at the door which opened upon the street from the 
room where the bed was. She had learned to save her 
strength by not answering calls at the door. So she 
said: “come,” without rising. She had to say “come” 
several times. At length some one slowly pulled the 
latch-string, the door softly opened and a very rough- 
looking man appeared. “Take a seat, sir,” said Mrs. 
Castle. Instead of doing as he was bidden, the stranger 
91 


The Victories of Wesley Castle. 

came forward to the bed, dropped upon his knees, buried 
his face in the coverings and began to sob and weep as 
though his heart would break. It was some seconds be- 
fore the man in the bed and the woman, who had risen 
from her chair, could recover from their surprise suffi- 
ciently to speak. At length the preacher said : “Who 
are you ? What does this mean ? What can we do for 
you?” It was a long time before the questioner could get 
any answer to his questions. When the man did speak, 
he said, in broken accents : “I want you to forgive me. 
I want you to pray for me. I cut your hold-back straps. 
I tried to kill you. I am your murderer.” Then he 
burst into another loud fit of crying. 

“What did you do it for?” said the invalid, with a 
troubled look in his face. 

“Don't you know me? answered the man, still on his 
knees. 

“Get up here, and sit in this chair, and tell me all 
about it,” said the minister. 

After a great deal of urging the man took the desig- 
nated seat. 

“I think I have seen you,” said the minister after eye- 
ing him intently a long time. “I have seen you at the 
Voorhes Hill School-house, when I preached there, sit- 
ting on a back seat. But what did you want to kill me 
for ? I never did you any harm. I never wanted to do 
anybody any harm. I want to do everybody all the good 
I can.” 

“I know you do. I know you never did me any 
harm. But I hated you,” said the man, bursting into 
another fit of weeping. 

By this time Wesley Castle was very much interested, 
if he was not before. “Go on,” he said, “tell me all 
92 


Fully Armed and Equipped. 

about it. You need not be afraid. I do not hate you. 
I love you. I will not have you punished.” 

“0,” said the man, “I am not afraid of that. I want 
you to have me punished. It would be a relief to go to 
prison, or even to be hung. I have a cider mill up on 
the hill. I was angry at you because you preached 
against drinking cider. I thought you would ruin my 
business. Some of the Christian people told me you 
would. The class-leader told me so. He’s my best cus- 
tomer. That night I was about half drunk. On the 
way to the school-house, I fell in with one of the church- 
members. You know him. It was — ” 

“Don’t tell me who it was,” exclaimed Wesley Castle, 
divining what was coming. “I don’t want to know who 
it was.” 

“Well, he began to scold about you. I don’t know 
exactly why; but, I guess, because you preach against 
sin, and want people to be good. He wound up by offer- 
ing me five dollars if I would go out into the horse-sheds 
and cut the hold-back straps to your buggy. I was mad 
enough to do it without any five dollars. As soon as he 
hinted at it I was ready. I did it. O, can you forgive 
me? Will you pray for me? Is there any mercy for 
such a wretch as I am ?” 

What were the feelings of the minister toward that 
rough, hateful, wicked man, his would-be murderer? 
Did he hate him? Ho. A Christian cannot hate any- 
body. Did he love him? Yes. It seemed to him that 
he had never loved any soul as he did the soul of the 
man who had tried to murder him. Tears of pity and 
love filled his eyes. “I forgive you with all my heart. 
It is a pleasure to forgive you. I should have forgiven 
you before you asked me to, before you came to the 
93 


The Victories of Wesley Castle. 

house, if I had known about you. I love you; and God 
loves you a million times more than I ever can. Get 
down here and let me pray for you.” 

The angels have rarely bent above such a prayer 
meeting as that. The man in the bed prayed. He 
poured out his soul to God as he never had before for any 
human being, not even the cow-boy Carter. Mrs. Castle 
prayed. The man prayed for himself. It was not much 
of a prayer, so far as words were concerned. About all 
there was of it was : “God be merciful to me, a sinner.” 
But God heard. That wonderful, supernatural, mir- 
aculous transformation, which we call “conversion” and 
which the Bible calls “the new birth,” was wrought that 
very hour, and that sinner, saved by grace, went back 
to Voorhes Hill, to publish from house to house the 
great things which Christ had done for him, and to be 
the herald and first-fruits of a mighty revival which was 
soon to sweep over that god-forsaken community. 

In some way the story got out that a man had been to 
the parsonage and confessed the crime of trying to mur- 
der the minister. Hot long after the district attorney 
of the county called where the leather latch-string hung 
from the yellow door. He wanted all the facts in the 
case. He was going to bring the matter before the grand 
jury. He wanted to know who the confessed criminal 
was. He would bring him before the jury, and the 
greater criminal who paid him the five dollars. He 
would go to the bottom, and let no guilty one escape. 
Wesley Castle begged the representative of the majesty 
of the law to let the case entirely alone. He said : “I 
have forgiven all my enemies. I forgave them before I 
knew about them. I do not know who paid the five 
94 


Fully Armed and Equipped. 

dollars, and I pray God I never shall. I shall not tell 
who it was who made the confession, unless I am 
obliged to. Let us leave it all to the Infinite Judge. 
He will bring things out all right. He will make all 
those people on the hill sorry for what they have done. 
If we prosecute them, they will grow worse. If we 
leave them to God, he will soften their hearts, and they 
will become his friends, and mine.” 

The district attorney reluctantly yielded. He went 
away saying to himself : “That is the strangest man I 
ever met. He is like Jesus, the Nazarene.” Hot many 
months later he was an active member of a church in 
the city of Dorchester. He traced his conversion back 
to that interview in the little yellow parsonage, where 
the leather latch-string hung from the door. 

It was many months before Wesley Castle was able to 
resume the work of pastor and preacher. Meanwhile 
who took care of his charge? At Littlefield the church 
was closed, for several Sundays, except that Sunday- 
school was held as usual. After that the morning ser- 
vice was held, at which one of the brethren, the village 
school-master, read a short sermon, which the wife of 
the invalid pastor wrote out at his dictation. At Sing 
Sing the people were so strong and spiritual that they 
conducted their own meetings, and got along almost as 
well as they would if their shepherd had been with 
them. At Voorhes Hill the converted cider-mill man 
started a prayer meeting, in place of the Sunday after- 
noon preaching service, which soon became very popu- 
lar. Though his education had gone no further than 
learning to read and write, he had good native ability, 
and, under the quickening power of the Holy Spirit, he 
soon developed marvelous skill and power in explaining 
95 


The Victories of Wesley Castle. 

the Bible, which he studied most diligently, day and 
night. Ere long, by common consent, he became the 
spiritual guide and virtual pastor of that community. 
All the while there was going out from that bed in the 
parsonage a silent and indescribable influence which per- 
vaded the whole circuit. How can it be explained? 
Eirst, everybody was talking about that brave and noble 
man, who loved the truth more than he loved his own 
life. In him they saw what true religion was, as they 
never had before; and many said to themselves: “I 
wish I were just such a Christian as Elder Castle.” The 
life he had lived for the few weeks he had been on the 
circuit, emphasized by his narrow escape from a martyr’s 
death, preached hundreds of the most powerful sermons, 
where he could have preached only one had the devil 
allowed him to proceed in the usual tenor of a pastor’s 
work. And, then, though he could not preach in the 
pulpit and visit from house to house, he could pray. As 
he lay there on his back, all those weeks, what uttered, 
and what unutterable, prayers he sent up to the throne 
of grace, for his dear people, eternity alone will be able 
to reveal. And so the work of God went on, though the 
chief workman was helpless in his bed; and clouds of 
mercy were gathering thick above Littlefield circuit, 
soon to burst in a mighty shower of blessing on the 
parched and thirsty ground. 

The Voorhes Hill tragedy took place in the end of 
October. By the middle of January the pastor was 
ready to resume his work, so far as the broken bones and 
the bruises on the head were concerned. But the suf- 
ferer’s nervous system had sustained a severer shock 
than the physician knew. That and over excitement, 
caused by too many calls from his friends and too much 
96 


Fully Armed and Equipped. 

exertion in dictating the sermonettes which the school- 
master called for every Saturday night, brought on a 
brain fever, which did not permit the patient to see his 
pulpit till the last of May. Then the doctor insisted 
that he should get away from home, for a little while, 
where change of scene would compel him to think of 
something beside his work and his charge. A trip to 
Washington was planned and consummated. 

It will be remembered that when Wesley Castle joined 
the Conference, and for some time afterward, he was not 
sure that God had called him to preach. The devil tor- 
tured his poor brain with horrid doubts while he was 
sick, telling him that he had committed a fearful and 
damning crime by running as a messenger for the Great 
King before he was sent. This thought lingered with 
him after he got up from his bed. 

One day, while he was in Washington, walking on 
Pennsylvania Avenue, that old, black interrogation 
point began to dance before his eyes, as in the months 
gone by; only this time it was bottomside-up. Instead 
of saying : “Don’t you think you ought to preach ?” it 
seemed to make faces at him, and say : “You are a fool 
to think that you ought to preach.” Surrounded with 
wealth and power and pomp and pride, he was tempted 
to despise the humble life of a poor Methodist itinerant. 
He stood still. He clenched his fist. He raised his arm. 
He brought it down almost to the horizontal. The sent- 
ence : “I will never preach again” was half formed on 
his lips, when that same voice which had whispered: 
“Don’t you think you ought to preach?” in the gallery 
of the old church at Fairview, shouted in his ear, as loud 
as thunder : “If you stop preaching, you will lose your 
soul !” That settled the question so that it stayed settled. 

97 


The Victories of Wesley Castle. 

His doubts about his life work were gone forever. He 
went home, thanking Grod for the providence which sent 
him to Washington. 

In the month of June a District camp meeting was 
held on the shore of Crystal Lake. Pastor Castle planned 
to go and have a Littlefield tent. Leaving Mrs. Castle 
behind, he started for the camp ground, with a one-horse 
load of baggage and provisions, to be followed, the next 
day, by a larger company. He had never attended a 
camp meeting, to stay through the week. All the way 
Satan sat on the wagon seat, by his side, telling him that 
he could not enjoy a camp meeting ; that it would be a 
noisy place; that it was just the place for excitable and 
fanatical people; that he was too quiet to get any good 
out of such uproar and confusion. Again and again the 
“old fellow with horns’’ hissed in his ear: “You’d bet- 
ter turn around and go back home.” He did not yield to 
these suggestions in the least; but they troubled him 
greatly. 

Arrived at the camp ground, he unloaded his baggage, 
put his horse in a neighboring livery stable, found where 
his tent was to stand, and went to work to lay a floor and 
to stretch the canvas. The superintendent of the grounds 
came upon him just as he was driving the last pin and in- 
formed him that the planks which he had taken for floor- 
ing were designed for seats, and that he must return 
them to the pile from which he had taken them, and find 
boards for his floor on another part of the ground. So 
he had to undo all his labor, and do it again. By the 
time his tent was up the second time, he was very tired ; 
and the devil came and said: “What did I tell you? 
You were a fool to come to this camp meeting. It will 
be a disappointment to you, from the beginning to the 
98 


Fully Armed and Equipped. 

end. The best thing you can do is to sell out your in- 
terest in the concern, and start for home early in the 
morning, so as to intercept your people before they are 
far on the way. You know that you have no business at 
a camp meeting.” To these suggestions the preacher 
replied: “I won’t go home. I will stay; and I will 
have a good time too.” And yet he was sorely tempted. 

The first service was held that evening. Wesley did 
not enjoy it very much. It was a barren season to his 
soul. That night he slept poorly, on a poor bed. He 
arose almost sick, and strongly tempted to be discour- 
aged and blue. The morning service was not very 
profitable. All the while he was saying to the tempter : 
“Get behind me, Satan,” and was praying for victory 
with all his might. His people arrived between the 
morning and afternoon services. That made him feel 
somewhat better. The afternoon meeting at the auditor- 
ium seemed dry and dull. After the service he took a 
walk alone in the woods. His thoughts were on divine 
things every minute, and he was holding on to God and 
resisting the devil. It was peculiar experience. He 
knew that he was trusting in God, and that he was not 
under any condemnation; and yet his heart was as dry 
and emotionless as a stone. He simply had no feeling at 
all. 

Returning to the camp meeting enclosure, he entered 
a tent where a prayer meeting was being held. It was 
about to close. The leader, a minister named Hall, was 
talking, as Wesley entered, about that experience which 
the Bible calls by such names as “entire sanctification,” 
“the baptism of the Holy Ghost,” the being “filled with 
the Spirit” and “perfect love.” The leader, Brother Hall, 
99 




The Victories of Wesley Castle. 

used the term, “perfect love.” He said: “I want 
every one of you who now has the blessing of perfect 
love to raise your right hand. I do not say every one 
who once had it, or who wants to receive it; but every 
one who has it now. Every one who now has the bless- 
ing of perfect love raise your hand.” 

At once a great debate arose in the mind of Wesley 
Castle. If it were written out, it would cover quite a 
large sheet of paper, although, such is the lightning 
speed with which the mind sometimes acts, it really did 
not last half a minute. It was something like this: 
“Have I the blessing of perfect love? Can I say that 
I have? I know that I did have it once. I do not 
know when I lost it. I know that I put my all on God’s 
altar more than a year ago, and that God accepted the 
surrender, and that I have never taken anything off. It 
is true that I have not one particle of feeling; my heart 
seems as dry and dead as a stone; I do not feel that I 
am wholly sanctified. But I believe I am. If I am not, 
I may be. If I never had the blessing of perfect love, 
it is my privilege in Jesus Christ to have it now. I am 
wholly the Lord’s. I claim the blessing now by naked 
faith, in the absence of all feeling. In token of my 
faith I will raise my hand.” 

He began to raise his hand. He had hardly got it as 
high as his ear when the Holy Ghost fell upon him in 
mighty power. In an instant his soul was all on fire 
with unutterable joy. The great billows of bliss began 
to roll over him, as on that ever memorable ninth of 
May, in the old Seminary at Fairview. For a long time 
he was swallowed up and drowned in seas of heavenly 
ecstasy. It seemed to him that he was too happy to live; 

100 


Fully Armed and Equipped. 

that the earthen vessel would break, and his spirit would 
fly away into the invisible world. The meeting soon 
closed. But it was half an hour before he had strength 
to rise from the straw, into which he had sunk, and walk 
to his tent. When he did walk out into the outer air, 
he staggered and reeled like a drunken man. He was 
drunk with the wine of the kingdom, with which the dis- 
ciples were filled on the day of Pentecost. 

From that time on, till the close of the camp meeting, 
Wesley Castle hardly ate or slept. He was too happy to 
eat. He was too happy to sleep. By day he was in 
some religious service, or was wandering about the 
grounds, telling all who would listen what God had done 
for his soul. In this way he won very many souls from 
sin to salvation or from the lower walks of the Christian 
life to the higher paths of communion with God. By 
night he seemed to himself to be floating in the pure 
ether, above the clouds, almost in sight of the great 
blazing throne of Infinite Love. This abstinence from 
food and sleep did not cause any physical weakness. In- 
stead, he grew stronger in body every day. He experi- 
enced the truth of the text : “They that wait upon the 
Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up 
with wings as eagles ; they shall run, and not be weary ; 
and they shall walk and not faint.” 

One morning Wesley Castle was appointed to preach 
at the stand. It was a wonderful time. He had never 
been so helped to preach before. The Holy Spirit so spoke 
through him that he hardly knew what he was saying, 
and hardly realized that he was speaking at all. The 
power of God came on the congregation in a wonderful 
manner. In the after meeting scores of Christians came 
101 


The Victories of Wesley Castle. 

to the altar, seeking the fullness of the Spirit; and other 
scores of sinners, seeking the pardon of their sins. The 
meeting could not he closed till half-past one o’clock. 
When the preacher went to his tent, he seemed to be 
walking in the air, and he felt as though, by waving his 
arms, he could have flown, like a bird, above the tops of 
the trees. 

That camp meeting closed, to the regret of Wesley 
and all the saints. After the tents had been struck, the 
pastor of Littlefield Circuit went to the livery stable to 
get his horse and wagon. While he was standing near 
the door, and the horse was being harnessed in the back 
part of the barn, he heard the hostler ^wearing in a ter- 
rible manner. Wesley was greatly grieved to hear the 
name of his heavenly Father insulted. A flood of tears 
came to his eyes. His heart melted into love toward the 
sinner. He walked to the other end of the stable and 
lovingly, but plainly, rebuked him for his sin. The 
man instantly burst into tears, and said: “I know I 
ought not to swear. I had a praying mother. I will 
never swear again, as long as I live. Pray for me that 
God will forgive me for this, and for all my sins.” 

It was a beautiful day. Driving up the hill, and look- 
ing back over the lake, and then turning his vision into 
his own heart, Wesley thought: a This is heaven. How 
can the heaven of heavens be any more blissful and 
glorious than this ?” 

At the top of the hill, the preacher found that his 
horse had lost a shoe. He stopped at a little blacksmith 
shop close by to have the shoe reset. While the smith 
was doing the job, he got angry at something and began 
to swear. Wesley reproved him as he had the hostler. 

102 


Fully Armed and Equipped. 

The result was the same as in the other case. The man 
burst into tears, said he would never swear again and 
asked the man of God to forgive his sin and pray for 
him. 

When Wesley reached home, his wife, not expecting 
his return so soon, was up on the hill at Brother Porter’s, 
and the house was locked. So he went across the street 
to Sister Barber’s. As he was weary from his ride and 
from the physical reaction following the excitement of 
the camp meeting, he asked the privilege of going into 
Sister Barber’s parlor and stretching himself out on her 
couch. The windows were hung with thick paper shades 
and the room was almost as dark as the darkest midnight. 
The tired preacher had been lying awake, in calm, sweet 
repose, for about half an hour, meditating on the good- 
ness of God, when suddenly the place seemed as light 
as the brightest noon-day; and he became conscious of 
the presence of the Three Persons of the Holy Trinity, 
each separate and distinct from the others. Whether 
he saw any form, or not, he could not afterward remem- 
ber. But he could never forget that, for a few seconds, 
in that darkened room, supernaturally illuminated, his 
spiritual senses apprehended God the Father, God the 
Son and God the Holy Ghost, as three separate persons. 
They spoke. As it seemed then, and as he remembered 
long after, they spoke in an audible voice. They spoke 
certain “unspeakable words, which it is not lawful for 
man to utter.” They also said : “You will have great 
trials and afflictions, in the years to come ; and you will 
have great victories and wonderful success.” Then 
there came upon him a baptism such that all his previous 
baptisms seemed like trifles unworthy to be mentioned. 

103 


The Victories of Wesley Castle. 

For a long time he lay utterly powerless, so far as his 
body was concerned, while the batteries of heaven were 
charging him over and over again with volt after volt 
of divine electricity. When the rapture was over and 
he was able to walk the earth again, it was night. Mrs. 
Castle had returned, and he went over to the yellow 
parsonage and went to bed. For several days he was 
in such a state of mental and spiritual abstraction that 
he hardly spoke, and his wife hardly dared to speak to 
him. He had been in the third heavens, and it was not 
easy to get down to earthly things. 

When Elder Castle stood in the pulpit, the Sunday fol- 
lowing the camp meeting, he seemed to the people like 
a messenger direct from heaven. His face fairly shone. 
Some who, perhaps, were a little inclined to be super- 
stitious afterward declared that they could see a halo of 
light all around him. He preached as they had never 
heard him preach before. His text was: “John truly 
baptized with water; but ye shall be baptized with 
the Holy Ghost not many days hence.” He showed 
what the baptism of the Holy Ghost is; that it 
always comes after conversion; that it is for all 
Christians down to the end of time; that it is an imper- 
ative duty, as well as a glorious privilege, to seek and ob- 
tain it; that it means peace, purity, joy and power; that 
it is to be obtained through simple faith; and that all 
Christians may have it now. Then he related his own 
experience, in detail, closing with an account of what 
had taken place at the camp meeting. The congrega- 
tion was profoundly moved. When, at the close, he in- 
vited all who would seek the baptism of the Holy Ghost 
to come to the altar, three-quarters of all the Christians 
104 


Fully Armed and Equipped. 

hurried to the front. It was such a scene as had never 
been witnessed in that old church. That was in the 
morning. In the afternoon, the little Sing Sing school- 
house was in a blaze of glory. The people thought 
Father Axtell would go up through the roof. In the 
evening the minister preached again at the Littlefield 
Church. The house was as full as it could hold, though 
the evening congregations were usually small. It is im- 
possible to describe the meeting. It is enough to say 
that many persons remarked as they were going home : 
“The revival has begun.” 



105 


VI. 

The Shock of Battle. 


A revival of religion is a phenomenon in God’s 
spiritual kingdom, as a shower of rain is a phenomenon 
in the kingdom of material things. In many respects 
the two phenomena are very much alike. For weeks and 
months there has been no moisture of either rain or dew. 
The grass and grain are scorched and dead. Even the 
trees are wilted and sear. The fountains and brooks have 
wholly disappeared. The largest rivers have shrunken 
within their narrowest beds. Clouds of smoke from 
burning forests and villages obscure the sun and blot out 
the moon and stars. Men and beasts gasp for breath in 
the thick and stifling atmosphere. All nature is clothed 
in sackcloth. The world’s great funeral day seems just 
at hand. But God remembers his covenant with Noah 
and his seed. The thunder rumbles sweet music along 
the horizon. The lightning paints hope on the midnight 
sky. The hot, dry wind feels cool and moist. Soon the 
gentle rain begins to fall. The sprinkle becomes a 
shower. The shower settles down to a long and steady 
pour. When, at length, the clouds clear away, the air is 
pure and sweet. Every tree and bush and shrub and 
blade of grass is painted a vivid green. All creation is 
as fresh as though it had just come from the creating 
fingers of the Almighty; and every heart of man and 
beast sings for joy. That is a revival in nature. 

In a certain community religion is almost dead. 
Comparatively few go to the house of God. Family 
prayer has ceased out of almost every home. The prayer 
106 


The Shock of Battle. 

meeting has wasted away till the breath of life is almost 
gone. The aged are dying without a hope in Christ. 
The young are growing up in unbelief and vice. The 
multitude are rushing madly on to eternal death. God’s 
name and God’s day are profaned without fear or shame. 
God’s law is trampled under foot as cattle trample stub- 
ble into the mud. A few, only a few, faithful ones are 
on their faces in the dust, crying to Heaven for mercy 
and salvation. By and by there comes a change. The 
Sunday congregations are larger. The minister preaches 
with greater power. Many are seen in God’s house who 
have been absent for years, or who never came before. 
The saints pray and testify with new fervor and zeal. 
Family altars are rebuilt. Doors to places of private 
prayer, long closed, swing on their hinges many times a 
day. Soon the church will hardly hold all who are 
hungry for the word of life. Scores are asking “What 
must I do to be saved ?” Hundreds turn their feet into 
the way of God’s commandments. The haunts of vice 
are forsaken. The whole community is uplifted and 
transformed. That is a revival of religion. 

Many of the professedly wise and great of earth de- 
spise revivals of religion, and speak of them, and of per- 
sons who labor to promote them, with ridicule and scorn. 
But we know that, while some men laugh and sneer, the 
angels rejoice. We also know that Christianity — and, 
with Christianity, civilization — has gained its greatest 
victories by means of revivals. But for the revivals 
under Moses, and Elijah, and Hezekiah, and Nehemiah, 
and the Apostles at Pentecost, and Luther and Wesley, 
true religion and civilization would have perished from 
among mankind. 


107 


The Victories of Wesley Castle. 

He is very ignorant of the history and the spirit of 
Christianity who cries out against revivals. Many ob- 
ject to revivals of religion because of the few, little, inci- 
dental evils and human imperfections which sometimes 
attend them. The same objections lie against revivals 
in nature. After a long drought, the storm which ends 
the distress and averts famine and death often causes 
considerable damage and loss. The swollen stream 
sweeps away bridges and covers fertile fields with gravel 
and flood-wood. The lightning, which comes with the 
life-giving rain, sets fire to the farmer’s barn and stable. 
But who, on that account, would wish that the drought 
should last forever ? 

Great and genuine revivals of religion are frequently 
accompanied by some things which may be criticized, 
and which the wise and good regret. If there is a great 
revival, somebody will get excited and pray too long; 
some evangelist, or preacher, will drop some phrase or 
word which, in his cooler moments, he would not have 
spoken; something will be done which is not according 
to the rules of fashionable society; some sinner will pro- 
fess conversion, who has not received what he honestly 
thought he had; some converts will backslide and become 
■worse than they ever were before. But who, on that ac- 
count, would wish that formality and spiritual death 
should continue forever in the Church and in the outside 
community ? 

A mighty, sweeping, old-fashioned revival visited Lit- 
tlefield Circuit, under the labors of Wesley Castle. Its 
beginning was described in our last chapter. So far as 
the eyes and ears of men could perceive, it began on the 
Sunday following the camp meeting. Like the Pente- 

108 


The Shock of Battle. 

costal revival, at Jerusalem, in the days of Peter, and 
like all genuine revivals, it began with the Church. As 
soon as all the members of the Jerusalem Church were 
filled with the Holy Ghost, the crowd came rushing in, 
and three thousand sinners were converted under the 
very first sermon which was preached to them. In that 
model revival no particular methods were employed. Ho 
notices of the meeting were put in the papers ; no flaming 
posters were pasted on the theater boards ; no “dodgers” 
were scattered through the city; no portraits of the 
apostles were hung in the store windows; they had no 
noted singer in the upper room, where the meeting was 
held ; they had no choir or organ ; there was no anxious 
seat or altar call. They simply obeyed the command of 
Christ and got filled with the Spirit. That was all the 
advertising that was needed. The people came. Peter 
preached a simple gospel sermon. The Spirit, who had 
come to him and to all his brethren and sisters, so might- 
ily convinced “the world of sin, of righteousness, and of 
judgment” that many cried right out in the meeting, in- 
terrupting the preacher and saying: “Men and breth- 
ren, what shall we do?” If all the members of any 
church will obey the Lord and get baptized with the 
Holy Ghost and with fire, the people will turn out and 
fill the church ; and very many will get under awful con- 
viction and will be soundly converted. That is the way, 
and the only way, to secure a revival which deserves the 
name. Such a revival goes with, or without, fine sing- 
ing; with, or without, an evangelist; with, or without, 
eloquent preaching; with, or without, good weather and 
favoring circumstances. When the Holy Ghost comes 
and fills the hearts of all, or most of, the members of the 
109 


The Victories of Wesley Castle. 

Church, many sinners will be convicted and converted, in 
spite of all that earth and hell can do. That is the way 
it was on Littlefield Circuit. 

There had not been a revival that amounted to much, 
on that charge, for more than a quarter of a century 
(except at Sing Sing, where there was a revival all the 
time). There had been protracted meetings almost with- 
out number. The people expected a protracted meeting 
every winter. Usually the results did not pay for the 
maple wood and kerosene oil which were burned in the 
old cracked stoves and the old dirty lamps. The people 
had come to think that there never could be a real re- 
vival at Slab City. What was the trouble? The min- 
isters had all begun at the wrong end. They had tried to 
get sinners converted over the heads of a cold and back- 
slidden church. They had utterly disregarded the 
divine plan and the commands of the Great Captain. He 
said : “When the Holy Ghost is come, he will reprove 
the world of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment;” 
“Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every 
creature; but tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem, until ye 
be endued with power from on high;” “Ye shall receive 
power after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you; and 
then ye shall be witnesses unto me.” The good men 
who had been the successive pastors at Littlefield for 
thirty years were so blind that they had never read those 
words of Jesus aright, and did not understand his plan 
of campaign, and so had gone away, usually at the end 
of the first year, disappointed and sore, declaring that 
there never could be a revival at Slab City. 

The young preacher came onto the charge, notoriously 
the hardest charge in all the conference, without any ex- 
110 


The Shock of Battle. 

perience in revival work, but fresh from the school of 
Christ and baptized with the Holy Ghost. He began 
work according to the divine plan. He had a great mass 
of hard coal to set on fire. Instead of building a shaving 
fire on the top of the pile, as all his predecessors had 
done, he dug in under the black mass of sin and worldli- 
ness and kindled a hard- wood fire beneath the very center 
of the mountain. Instead of preaching all the time to sin- 
ners that they must repent and be converted, he preached 
to professed Christians that they must consecrate them- 
selves wholly to God and receive the mighty baptism of 
the Holy Ghost. Having received a fresh anointing at 
the camp meeting, he preached, that first Sunday after 
his return, with such power that three-fourths of all the 
members at Slab City came to the altar to seek the full- 
ness of the Spirit. They did not all receive that day. 
Some were not dead in earnest. Some recoiled when 
the Spirit of burning began to search their hearts and 
show them the evil wdiich dwelt within, and, having lost 
what little religion they had, became bitter enemies to 
the pastor and fierce fighters against the work of God. 
But many, who had been wandering in the wilderness for 
long weary years, entered into the Canaan of Perfect 
Love that very day. Others followed in the succeeding 
days, until, within a week, there were more than a score 
who could testify, with their faces shining with the very 
glory of the upper world, that “the blood of Jesus Christ 
cleansed them from all sin.” For two months there was 
a meeting every night; and although they were the 
months of June and July, the busiest in all the year to 
the farmers in the valley and on the hills, the church was 
crowded every night. For two weeks the minister 
111 


The Victories of Wesley Castle. 

preached exclusively to the Church; and the burden of 
his preaching was : “Have ye received the Holy Ghost 
since ye believed ?” “Be filled with the Spirit.” “The 
very God of peace sanctify you wholly.” By the end of 
two weeks the great majority of the Littlefield Church 
were away over into Canaan, “filled with joy and with 
the Holy Ghost,” “praising God and having favor with 
all the people ;” and sinners were beginning to stand up 
in the congregation, uninvited, weeping and trembling 
and asking : “What must we do to be saved?” 

How were things moving on Voorhes Hill, where the 
preacher came so near being murdered? The second 
Sunday after camp meeting he preached there, the first 
time since the attempted murder in the latter part of 
October. The people gave him a perfect ovation. Some 
were still his enemies, hating him all the more because 
they had been unable to kill him; but they stayed away. 
All who came (and the school-house was full as it could 
hold) were the preacher’s friends, made such by the love 
and heroism of the preacher himself and by the Spirit 
of God working through the converted cider-mill man, 
whom they now regarded as their class-leader and second 
pastor. It seemed to Wesley Castle as though he had 
never been in that school-house before, the atmosphere 
was so sweet and warm, where it had been so bitter and 
cold. He thanked God for the change, and preached, 
with great joy and unction, from the text: “How* 
abideth faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest 
of these is love.” The people were melted into tender- 
ness, and said to themselves : “The best sermon that can 
be preached from that text is the life and character of 
the man who is now preaching to us.” 

112 


The Shock of Battle. 

The next morning the cider-mill man knocked at the 
door of the old yellow parsonage. We will call him by 
the name by which he was generally known, Mun White. 
As soon as he was admitted he said: “Elder, I have 
come to talk with you about my religious business. I 
know that I’m converted. I know that I’m a new crea- 
ture in Jesus Christ. But I’m not wholly saved. I 
thought I was, at first; but now I know I’m not. Before 
I got converted the devil was in me as big as a wood- 
chuck; and he had his way with me all the time. He 
made me lie, and swear, and gamble, and smoke, and get 
drunk, and do a great many other bad things. Jesus 
Christ came and knocked the devil down, and, I thought, 
killed him. I really thought that the devil in me was 
dead. But, after a while, he woke up, and I found that 
he had only been stunned. Now he’s alive in me tre- 
mendously. I don’t swear or get angry ; but some times 
I feel like it. I don’t drink whiskey any more; but 
some times I hanker after it. I don’t know that I do 
anything wrong — I’m sure I’d rather die than do any- 
thing that Jesus don’t want me to do; but I feel like 
doing wrong things some times. I don’t want to do 
wrong; but there is a devil nature in me that does want 
to do wrong. Then there’s my tobacco. I’ve smoked 
and chewed ever since I was ten years old. When I got 
converted I didn’t think it was wrong — I didn’t think 
anything about it. Now I see it is wrong; but I’m not 
strong enough to quit it. Now, Elder, I came down this 
morning to have you tell me whether there’s any way to 
have the devil in me killed, so that he won’t trouble me 
any more, so that I can be right as well as do right.” 

That unlettered child of nature did not know that he 
113 


The Victories of Wesley Castle. 

was asking a question which has vexed the mind of 
every lover of virtue in all the generations and among 
all the races. It was Paul’s question when he exclaimed : 
“O wretched man that I am ! who shall deliver from the 
body of this death?” Alas! the great majority of the 
philosophers and theologians have answered that ques- 
tion “Ho.” They have said : “You can never be rid of 
the evil of your own heart. You must fight against the 
inner devil as long as you are in the body. The Eternal 
Son of God is not strong enough to throttle the man of 
sin, and choke him to death and cast his corpse out of 
your soul.” But fortunately for Munson White he 
came for spiritual counsel to one who had studied in the 
school of John Wesley and St. Paul and the Holy Ghost. 
His answer was : “Yes. You can have that inside devil 
killed now, so dead that you will never feel him stirring 
in your soul again as long as you live. You will have to 
fight against the devil on the outside as long as you live. 
But you need not have any devil inside to let the outside 
devil in.” Then the minister explained to the young 
convert, with the intellectual wisdom of a philosopher 
and with the spiritual wisdom of a saint, the Wesleyan 
and Bible doctrine of Entire Sanctification. With such 
a teacher, Mun White learned in half an hour all that it 
had taken his teacher fifteen months to learn without 
any human help. Then they went to God in prayer. 
The preacher prayed for the young convert, and the 
young convert prayed for himself. At the end of an 
hour Mun White started back for Voorhes Hill with 
the certainty in his heart, and the testimony on his lips, 
that the very God of peace had sanctified him wholly, 
throughout body, soul and spirit. It is recorded in one 
114 


The Shock of Battle. 

of the books which will be opened and read at the judg- 
ment day that, after that interview with God and the 
preacher in the Slab City parsonage, Mun White never, 
to the day of his death, had the slightest craving for 
whiskey or tobacco, and never felt the uprising of anger 
or profanity, or any other form of the carnal nature, in 
his soul. That day the “old man” died and was buried. 
That day the “new man” began to live a free and per- 
fect life. 

There was no one in the Littlefield Church who 
needed the “second blessing” so much as Simeon Per- 
kins. He was an honest God-fearing man, who sincerely 
loved the Church, and intended to do right, and had a 
genuine religious experience. But the old Adam was 
still in him, as big and strong and ugly as he was before 
his conversion. His old Adam took the form of a most 
willful and ungovernable temper. Ho one who was 
present at that official meeting at the parsonage ever for- 
got how he and John Churchill got mad at each other 
and would have had a pitched battle right on the spot, if 
their athletic pastor had not parted them. That was 
characteristic of Simeon Perkins. He was notorious, all 
through the county, for the quickness with which he 
would get angry and for violence and ferocity of his 
passion when he was angry. He went by the nick-name 
of “nitro-glycerine.” The ungodly always sneered when 
they heard him pray or speak in meeting. He mourned 
over his fault, and often confessed his sinfulness, in 
private and in public. He struggled against it with all 
his might, and, sometimes, by the grace of God, he was 
victorious over himself. But the old Adam was in him 
all the time; and, although he, Simeon Perkins, had 
115 


The Victories of Wesley Castle. 

been trying to grow in grace for twenty-five years, ever 
since his conversion, the old Adam was just as much 
alive as he had ever been. 

Simeon Perkins was at the revival meetings every 
night. Whenever there was a chance he prayed and 
testified. He said a great deal about growing in grace, 
but carefully avoided the subject of entire sanctification 
and the baptism of the Holy Ghost. Whenever seekers 
for full salvation were asked to rise, or to come to the 
front, he kept his seat. 

On the second Sunday after the camp meeting a terri- 
ble scene took place at church. One of Brother Per- 
kins’ daughters had been keeping company with a young 
man whom her father did not like. There was nothing 
bad about him. He belonged to a respectble, but poor, 
family. But he was guilty of the unpardonable sin of 
not knowing how to make money; and Sarah Perkins’ 
father had told her that, if she married William Edson, 
he would disinherit and disown her, and she should never 
cross the threshold of the house where she was born. 
True to her woman’s nature she was all the more de- 
termined that she would marry the man whom she loved. 
Saturday night they were married. As Wesley Castle 
had not been ordained, and could not perform the mar- 
riage ceremony, he was saved the embarrassment of 
choosing between wounding the feelings of the lovers and 
displeasing the wrathful father of the girl. They went 
to a neighboring town and got the indissoluble knot tied 
by a strange minister. 

The next morning Mr. and Mrs. William Edson were 
at church and sat in a pew directly opposite the one 
where the bride’s father was. Simeon Perkins did not 

116 


The Shock of Battle. 

hear a word of the sermon. He sat cherishing his anger 
and shooting darts of fire, out of his eyes, at the happy 
couple across the aisle. As soon as the benediction was 
spoken, he was on his feet. With the look of a demon on 
his face he sprang forward, and seizing his hated son-in- 
law by the throat, began to pour upon his devoted head 
a torrent of the most abusive language that the inhabit- 
ants of Slab City ever heard. It would be impossible, if 
it were not improper, to repeat what the demon-possessed 
man uttered. But, among other things, he said, again 
and again: “Fll shoot you, you miserable whelp; Bll 
shoot you. If I had a revolver, I’d shoot you on the 
spot.” He was perfectly crazy with rage. As he was 
much stronger than the young man, there is no telling 
what he would have done if the congregation had not 
gathered around. Women screamed with terror, and 
several fainted clear away with fright. But the men 
crowded around and told Simeon Perkins that he would 
have to take his hands off from William Edson. He de- 
clared that he would not. But when the athletic young 
pastor took him by the wrists, with a grip of steel, the 
victim of his passion fell to the floor, white and limp. 
With a look of mingled pity and rebuke the pastor re- 
leased the frenzied brute in human form, and the latter 
strode out of the church, followed, as soon as she could 
recover strength to walk, by his humiliated and heart- 
broken wife. 

At the preaching service, that night, the minister had 
a tremendous text — the awful scene of the morning — 
from which to preach a sermon on the need of the sancti- 
fying power of the Holy Ghost. He preached with 
thrilling and overwhelming effect. In the after meeting 
117 


The Victories of Wesley Castle. 

many sought the baptism of the Spirit, for heart-cleans- 
ing, with cries and tears, and found, to the satisfaction 
of their hungry souls. 

There was preaching at the church every evening that 
week. But Simeon Perkins did not show his face. Peo- 
ple said he was ashamed to come, and would never come 
again. He did come, however, the next Sunday morn- 
ing. Observant ones, who got a chance to look in his 
face, could see that he was not the same Simeon Perkins 
whom they had known so long. The preacher saw the 
change in a second, and knew what it was. As soon as 
the sermon was over, Brother Perkins rose and asked 
the permission to speak. The preacher nodded willing 
assent. Walking up the middle aisle, and leaning his 
back against the altar rail, he stood and looked, for a 
minute, at the congregation. The house was full, and a 
hush of wonder and awe was on every heart. The first 
words which came from the lips of Simeon Perkins were : 
“God has sanctified my soul. Halleluiah !” The next 
thing he said was: “I humbly ask the forgiveness of every 
person here for the sin of murder which I committed in 
this sacred place last Sunday. I have asked the forgive- 
ness of my children, my wife and my God; and they 
have forgiven me.” Then he went on and told what had 
taken place during the week. It was, in substance, this : 
Till Saturday night he had hardly slept or eaten. The 
most of the time he had spent in the barn, up on the 
hay. He had had an awful overhauling of his life and 
religious experience. God had showed him the depths 
of his soul. The All-searching One had uncapped the 
hell of depravity which was in the center of his being, 
and had let him see the fire and smell the brimstone. He 
118 


The Shock of Battle. 

saw that he must have the depravity all taken out — that 
he must be cleansed through and through, and be filled 
with the Holy Ghost — or give up trying to be a Christian 
and sink into hell. Then he went to praying for a clean 
heart. As he kept on praying, one thing after another 
came up before his mind which he must surrender to 
God. He gave them all up without much difficulty. He 
was so hungry after righteousness that any sacrifice 
seemed small to obtain it. He thought that all was given 
up, and he was asking himself : “what now ?” when some- 
thing said : “How about raising tobacco ?” At first he 
thought that the devil was asking the question to dis- 
tract his mind and turn him from his purpose. But, ere 
long, he discovered that it was God. God made it very 
plain to him that it was wrong for him to raise tobacco. 
This was the way the Holy Spirit reasoned with him: 
“You know that smoking and chewing the vile Indian 
weed are great evils. They are blurring the intellect and 
poisoning the blood and debasing the manhood of mil- 
lions of men, especially the young. You know that 
cigarette-smoking is damning multitudes of boys and 
that cigarette-smoking is but a part of the one great evil. 
You would not use tobacco yourself. You know that 
everybody who does use it is injured in property, in body, 
in intellect and in soul. If it is wrong to use tobacco, 
it is wrong to produce it for others to use. You can 
never take one step forward in your religious experience 
till you promise to quit raising tobacco.” Then began 
a terrible struggle between duty and selfishness. If he 
did not raise tobacco, he could not pay off the heavy 
mortgage on his farm. If he did not raise tobacco, he 
did not see how he could escape bankruptcy. With to- 
119 


The Victories of Wesley Castle. 

bacco at twenty-five cents a pound, and wheat at one 
dollar a bushel how could he afford to quit raising to- 
bacco? As soon as he began to hesitate God began to 
put the screws on him tighter than before. Every time 
he invented a new excuse for persisting in wrong-doing, 
the Almighty gave another twist to the screw of convic- 
tion. At length the man could endure the agony no 
longer and cried : “I yield, I yield, I will do right, if I 
die in the poor-house.” Almost immediately the blessing 
came. The mighty baptism of the Holy Ghost fell upon 
him. He was baptized with the Holy Ghost and wuth 
fire. He could feel the “refining fire” going through his 
soul, burning out the inbred sin. He could feel the 
fiery waves succeeding each other, hotter and hotter, till 
at last, he was conscious that the last trace of sin was 
burned out, and that his heart was whiter than the 
driven snow. He closed his remarks with these words: 
“Brethren and Sisters, I know that God has wholly sanc- 
tified my soul, and that my old passionate temper which 
has tormented me, and disgraced the Church, so long, 
and all the roots of bitterness which have been in my 
soul, are gone forever. Henceforth all I have and all 
I am are the Lord’s. I have raised my last tobacco. 
To-morrow I shall cut down, and plough under, my 
growing crop, and make a bonfire of two thousand 
pounds of the old crop, ready for the market, in mv 
shed.” 

That morning service did not close till two o’clock. 
Man after man arose, in quick succession, all members of 
the Church, and confessed his lukewarmness and un- 
faithfulness and worldliness, .and implored the forgive- 
ness of his brethren and of God. Most of them were to- 
120 


The Shock of Battle. 

bacco-raisers; and, without an exception, they confessed 
the sin of turning God’s soil and sunshine and rain into 
poison and death, and registered a solemn vow that they 
would never grow another tobacco plant as long as they 
should live. That was manifestly the result of the Holy 
Spirit’s work and of Simeon Perkins’ example; for the 
preacher had never uttered a word, in sermon or exhorta- 
tion, on the subject of raising tobacco. It was an im- 
pressive sight — those strong men, standing together in 
front of the altar, weeping like children, asking each 
other’s forgiveness for the bad influence they had exerted 
and pledging themselves, with clasped hands and inter- 
locked arms, to a life of perfect loyalty and obedience to 
Jesus Christ. Then they knelt and prayed that the Holy 
Ghost might come on them in sanctifying power; and 
they did not pray in vain. 

The minister was about to pronounce the benediction 
when a very strange thing took place. A very rough, 
burly man rose from his seat at the farther end of the 
room and came rapidly up the aisle. It was John 
Churchill, the sworn enemy of Simeon Perkins, the man 
whom Perkins called a liar, and with whom he came so 
near having a fight at that first official meeting, at the 
parsonage. He did not come for war, this time, but 
for peace. Seizing his old-time rival and enemy by the 
hand, with an iron grip, he exclaimed, with voice chok- 
ing with emotion : “Brother Perkins, forgive me. I’ve 
hated you, and lied about you, and cheated you. But 
I’m sorry; and I want you to forgive me and let me be 
your friend.” Simeon Perkins returned the grip with 
interest, saying, as he did so: “Brother Churchill, 
there’s nothing for me to forgive. The wrong’s all on 
121 


The Victories of Wesley Castle. 

my side. I have hated you, and lied about you and 
cheated you. If you can forgive me, we’ll call it square, 
and be friends for ever.” Throwing their arms around 
each other’s necks, those neighbors who had hated each 
other so cordially for a score of years, lay upon each 
other’s shoulders a long time, weeping tears of joy and 
]ove. The whole congregation was melted into tears; 
and many, who had never known the Lord, resolved that 
moment that they would seek and serve the God whose 
Spirit could work such wonders as their eyes had beheld 
that day. 

After that Sunday morning, the revival moved on 
with mighty power. It burned deep and high. It swept 
over a circle whose diameter was about ten miles. There 
was hardly a home in all that area which the Holy Spirit 
did not enter in convicting and converting power. In 
very many instances v/hole families were converted, where 
before all were unsaved. Scores were converted who 
could not remember when they were last at church, or 
when last they heard the voice of prayer. The most 
notorious sinners and the most devilish infidels were 
saved, and became as pure and teachable, seemingly, as 
little babes. The revival destroyed certain forms of evil 
for which Slab City and the surrounding country had 
long been famous. There was one licensed rum-hole. 
The proprietor lost all his customers, and moved out of 
town, remarking that Heaven could not be a much 
worse place for his business than Littlefield had become. 
There was a gambling den, upstairs, in the back part of 
the building where the post-office was kept. It dried 
up, under the hot breath of the revival, and blew away. 
Slab City was famed, far and wide, for its profanity and 
122 


The Shock of Battle. 

Sabbath-breaking. Almost everybody swore every- 
where. And the church-goers were a little handful. Be- 
fore the end of July almost everybody was praying (no- 
body dared to swear) and the church would not begin to 
hold the people who wanted to take part in the worship 
of God. Within a year from the time the revival began, 
a new church was dedicated, in place of the old, twice as 
large, and costing ten thousand dollars, every cent of 
which had actually been paid, without a fair, dinner, or 
show of any kind. A new, fifteen-hundred-dollar par- 
sonage had, in the same interval, taken the place of the 
old yellow hut where the Castles began their house-keep- 
ing. Another effect of the revival was that it almost put 
an end to tobacco raising in all that valley. 

The most blessed thing about the revival was that it 
was deep and thorough. Nearly all the converts came 
through shouting. They knew that they were converted. 
And most of them went right on, immediately after, and 
experienced the “second blessing,” as John Wesley, the 
founder of the Methodist Church, called it — entire 
sanctification and the baptism of the Holy Ghost are the 
usual names by which it was known to the founders of 
the New Testament Church. As a consequence, very 
few of the converts went back to the world. The great 
majority became pillars in the temple of God. That re- 
vival gave many ministers and missionaries to the ser- 
vice of the Church. So much for a revival which began 
in the preaching of Christian holiness by a preacher who 
had the experience. 

The sad part of the story is that there were some in 
the Church who fought the revival to the very end. 
They never spoke of the meetings or the minister, except 
123 


The Victories of Wesley Castle. 

with sour contempt and bitter fault-finding. For the 
most part, they were the family and friends of Martin 
Jackson, who never forgave the preacher for driving 
away that worthy trustee by his foolish tobacco story. 
But for those opposers, the pastor believed that every- 
body in the town of Littlefield might have been con- 
verted. 

It ought to be put on record that Simeon Perkins, who 
had been noted for his willful and passionate temper, 
ever after he received the baptism of the Holy Ghost, 
was the very personification of calmness and gentleness 
and patience. He was strongest where he had been 
weakest. Persons who came into that community after 
the great revival, and became acquainted with Brother 
Perkins, could not believe the stories which were told of 
his former passion and ferocity. Simeon Perkins and 
John Churchill never ceased to be bosom friends, twin 
giants in the army of the Lord. 

There were many remarkable conversions in that re- 
vival. Volumes could be written about them. One of 
the most striking cases was that of Sam Hooker. He 
was a lazy, drunken, good-for-nothing. His wife sup- 
ported him and six ragged children by taking in wash- 
ing. He never went to church. He spent most of his 
time sitting in the only rum-hole in the village, or in 
roaming through the neighboring forests, on the hills, 
hunting for game which hardly existed, with a long, old- 
fashioned rifle. He had not seen the inside of a church 
in twenty years. One night, when the revival was at its 
hight, he woke up from a sound sleep, so he declared, 
and saw the devil, horned and grinning, standing by his 
bed. “I have come to get you,” said the king of the bot- 
124 


The Shock of Battle. 

tomless pit, “come along with me.” Without a word, 
Sam Hooker rose up to a sitting posture, reached around 
to the head of the bed and laid hold of his rifle, which 
always stood there loaded while he slept, cocked it, 
brought it to his eye and fired. The devil disappeared, 
and Sam sunk back into sleep. The next morning the 
rifle was empty, and there was a bullet hole in the door. 
“If the devil is after me like that, it’s about time for me 
to get religion,” Sam said to himself. That night he 
went to church, went forward for prayers, told his story, 
confessed his sins and got converted. He also sought 
and obtained the baptism of the Holy Ghost; and be- 
came a very pattern of temperance, virtue, industry and 
godliness. He had been an awful tobacco slave, chew- 
ing and smoking almost from his cradle. He took to 
tobacco like a duck to water. He never had to learn to 
use the poisonous weed. It did not make him sick the 
first time he used it, as is almost always the case. The 
sanctifying power of the Holy Ghost took the love of 
tobacco out of Sam Hooker in the twinkling of an eye. 
Some weeks after, he had occasion to use some nails. He 
found some in a box which had contained tobacco, though 
none remained that could be seen. While he was driv- 
ing the nails he put some of them in his mouth. The 
slight taint of tobacco which was upon them made him 
so sick that he thought he would die. He barely escaped 
the invisible polution with his life. Thus it appeared 
that the Holy Spirit had so cleansed his body from all 
the poison of tobacco that it was purer and healthier 
than when he was born. 

One Sunday afternoon in July, Wesley Castle was re- 
turning home from his Voorhes Hill appointment. He 
had had a glorious time, preaching and leading class. 

125 


The Victories of Wesley Castle. 

The revival flames were burning hot and high, under the 
lead of the Holy Spirit and Munson White. When he 
started from the school-house the rain was falling gently, 
and there were signs of a heavy shower. When he 
reached the foot of the hill, where he came so near losing 
his life the previous October, the rain was coming down 
in torrents, and the thunder was roaring and the light- 
ning was flashing most fearfully. As he was driving 
slowly up a little hill, between two pieces of forest, sud- 
denly a large man jumped out of the thicket, seized the 
horse’s bridle and leveled a heavy revolver at his head. 
The man had thick, shaggy, red hair, and was dressed in 
a red flannel blouse. It was Carter, the cow-boy from 
Hew Mexico, who had tried to murder Prof. Castle at 
Fairview Seminary and, failing in that, had sworn to 
shoot him at sight. He supposed that his mortal enemy 
was in prison; but there he was, full of murderous hate, 
a practiced shot, with a loaded gun within six feet of his 
defenseless head. 



126 


VII. 


Love Suffereth Long, and Is Kind. 

Wesley Castle was face to face with death. He was 
looking into the muzzle of a cocked and loaded revolver, 
in the hand of a desperate, vindictive, demon-possessed 
man, whom nothing could dissuade from taking venge- 
ance on the one whom he chose to regard as his greatest 
enemy. It was an awful moment. The next second that 
cruel finger would press the trigger, and a lump of lead 
would come crashing through his brain, and his soul 
would be in eternity. He could do absolutely nothing 
to save himself. The slightest movement to get out of 
range of the deadly weapon would only hasten the fatal 
shot. Ho argument, no appeal, no entreaty would have 
the faintest effect on that flinty heart. If he should cry 
for help, no friendly ear could hear, on account of the 
distance and the storm, and he would be dead before the 
words could get out of his mouth. So Wesley Castle 
sat, as motionless as marble, looking into the other 
world. 

The time seemed very long. His whole life passed be- 
fore him like a panorama. He recalled very many things 
which he had wholly forgotten. Every thing which he 
had ever done or said or thought stood out before his 
mental vision as fresh and vivid as a present reality. 
His mind dwelt especially on his childhood; his convic- 
tion; his conversion; his neglect of duty, while in col- 
lege; his fifteen months’ struggle for a clean heart; the 
glorious baptism of the Holy Ghost, which came to him 
on that ever-memorable Sunday afternoon; the revival at 
Fairview Seminary; his fight with Carter; his call to the 
127 


The Victories of Wesley Castle. 

ministry ; and the events which had taken place on Lit- 
tlefield Circuit. He could see every sinful act, word, 
thought, and feeling of which he had ever been guilty. 
O ! how many and how great they were ! In number 
they were as many as the drops of the ocean ; in magni- 
tude, they were like the great mountains. He shuddered 
at the sight. But, the next moment, he saw the huge 
billows of a crimson sea, whose farther shore was out of 
sight, come rolling in; and he knew that his past life was 
all under the blood which cleanses from all sin. Then 
the great billows of joy began to roll over his soul, as on 
that glorious Sabbath at Fairview Seminary. There was 
no shadow of fear on his mind. Perfect love had cast 
out all fear. In one second more he would be with 
Jesus, in paradise. He did not fear the bullet crashing 
through his skull. He did not fear the death agony. He 
did not fear the dark river; there was no dark river. 
He did not fear the judgment throne. But he thought 
of his wife; how lonely she would be without him. He 
thought of his dear people, and of the young converts 
who needed a tender shepherd’s care. He thought of his 
life work, just begun. He wished he might live to com- 
plete it. Something whispered in his heart : “pray that 
your life may be saved, and God will answer your 
prayer.” 

Just then he heard a voice. The man behind the re- 
volver was speaking. With a horrid oath, he hissed 
through his clinched teeth : “I have you now. You got 
me disgraced and expelled from school. You whipped 
me that night in room Ho. 60. I swore then that I 
would kill you; and I will. I’d kill you, if I knew I’d 
go to hell the next minute. I might have shot you from 
the bushes, as you rode along. But I wanted you to 
128 


Love Suffereth Long, and Is Kind. 

know that I killed you. I’ll give you just half a minute 
to get ready to die. In thirty seconds you will be a dead 
man.” 

Wesley Castle shut his eyes and prayed. He prayed 
for life, that he might work for God. How that prayer 
could be answered, he could not imagine. That it would 
be answered the Holy Spirit, who moved him to pray, 
made him believe. 

Suddenly an awful peal of thunder shook the earth 
and air. Wesley had never heard anything like it. It 
was right there. His first thought was that it was the 
expected bullet, ploughing its way through his skull and 
brain. At the same instant, came a blinding flash of 
lightning. It was so intense that Wesley could see the 
red glare through his closed eye-lids. He could feel the 
waves of electricity going through his body. The horse 
bounded forward. The lines were still in the driver’s 
hands. He drew them tight, and opened his eyes. The 
horse was free; but was standing still. The man with 
the revolver had disappeared. Ho ! there he was, lying 
on the muddy ground as motionless as a corpse. In an 
instant Wesley was bending above him. He was not 
dead; but was stunned and paralyzed and unconscious. 
The lightning had not exactly struck him; in that case 
he would certainly have been killed. But the Being 
who loads and fires the artillery of the skies had taken 
so true an aim that the bolt struck a tree near the road, 
shivering it into kindling wood, while what human can- 
noniers call the wind of the shot swept the would-be 
assassin from his feet and hurled him to the ground, 
powerless and almost dead. 

Wesley Castle looked into the face of his enemy with- 
out a spark of hate. But the words of holy writ came 
129 


The Victories of Wesley Castle. 

into his mind: “vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith 
the Lord.” The benumbed right hand still clutched the 
revolver. Wesley wrenched it from the stony fingers 
and tossed it into the buggy. As he did so he noticed 
that one of the chambers was empty. It must have 
been discharged a fraction of a second after the Al- 
mighty discharged his artillery at the tree. So near had 
that soldier of the cross come to being transferred to the 
triumphant host above. What should he do with that 
almost lifeless form ? It did not take him long to decide. 
Calling into requisition those mighty sinews and muscles, 
which had so often executed the behests of his mind and 
heart, he lifted his enemy from the ground and placed 
him in the buggy, half sitting, half reclining. Then, 
springing to the seat, he caught the lines, and, giving his 
fleet horse a sharp cut with the whip, he drove rapidly 
through the pouring rain and flying mud toward his 
home. 

Within forty-five minutes Carter, still unconscious, 
was in the home of the man whom he had tried to mur- 
der. As gently as though he had been a sick baby in the 
hands of the tenderest of mothers, Castle removed his 
wet and muddy garments, washed and dried and chafed 
his body, laid him in the best bed which the house 
afforded, and went for Doctor Bass. 

The minister told the physician that Carter was a 
former student of his, whom he had found, on his way 
home from Voorhes Hill, lying unconscious under a 
tree which a bolt of lightning had shivered into splinters. 
The rest of the story he told no one but his wife. The 
doctor, who, during the great revival, had become a “be- 
loved physician” in the Lord, went to work on his 
patient with all the skill he had. At the end of an hour 
130 


Love Suffereth Long, and Is Kind. 

Carter was conscious, but could not speak or move. He 
could make a noise, but could produce no articulate 
sound. He could turn bis bead a little, and move bis 
lips, and open and shut bis eyes. Beyond that, be was as 
helpless as a dead man. He seemed like one who bad 
suffered a severe shock of apoplexy, stopping just short 
of death. 

It was six weeks before Carter left his bed. The par- 
alysis gradually passed away, very gradually. First the 
sufferer could move bis fingers and toes. Then be could 
slide bis arms along the sheets, and draw up bis legs a 
little toward bis body. Long practice and patient wait- 
ing gave him more perfect use of bis limbs. When be 
could turn over in bed, he thought be bad gained a won- 
derful victory. His mind was clear almost from the 
moment of returning consciousness. During those six 
weeks be did a vast amount of thinking. Such is the 
human mind that he could not help thinking. And 
then the Holy Spirit had a fair chance at him and com- 
pelled him to think. The Holy Spirit was aided in this 
work of conviction by the prayers and faith of the min- 
ister and his wife and of all the praying ones in the 
Church, to whom the pastor told the story of Carter’s 
life, leaving out everything pertaining to the battle in 
room Ho. 60 and the attempted assassination on the 
Voorhes Hill road. 

At first Carter was very ugly and hateful. As far as 
his paralysis would permit, he twisted his not too hand- 
some face into a malignant scowl, which he wore when- 
ever his host was in sight. If he had had the power, he 
would have killed the man who had saved his life. But 
slowly the scowl disappeared. Wesley kept out of the 
Toom most of the time, so as not to irritate the heart 
131 


The Victories of Wesley Castle. 

which was full of revenge. But he spent hours in prayer 
for his conviction and salvation. The more he prayed 
the more he loved his enemy. At length he got the as- 
surance that his prayers were heard and that Carter 
would be converted. 

Mrs. Castle spent many hours every day in the room 
with Carter. He felt no grudge toward her, and would 
listen with pleasure while she read to him. He hated 
everything religious. So she read novels, which she did 
not enjoy herself, mixing in short readings from the 
Bible and from the biographies of eminent Christian 
men and women. She also read a very interesting book 
of travel, in which the author used what he saw to illus- 
trate gospel truth. Art, architecture, history, science 
and religon were so intermixed that they could not be 
separated; and the sick man swallowed a great deal of 
bitter medicine, such as his soul needed, for sake of the 
sugar with which it was liberally coated. 

Little by little that flinty heart grew soft. One day, 
about a month after Carter w T as laid on the parsonage 
bed, Mrs. Castle read him the story of the betrayal, trial 
and crucifixion of Jesus. She used a harmony of the 
Gospels, which put into one narrative all that the four 
Evangelists have left us. She was a very fine reader, 
having taken an extensive course in elocution under the 
best teachers, and that day she read with unusual pathos 
and power. It was a contrived plan between her and her 
husband, and he was at prayer, at the same time, in the 
room which served the double purpose of parlor and 
study. The invalid seemed annoyed and offended, at 
first; but he could not help himself, he had to listen. 
Soon he became intensely interested. He recalled a 
time, in his early childhood, when his mother, now a 
132 


Love Suffereth Long, and Is Kind. 

saint in glory, read him that same story. His heart was 
tender then. He remembered how he wept bitterly and 
asked his mother how they could treat Jesus so. Mrs. 
Castle’s reading brought that scene back to his mind as 
distinctly as though it had taken place but yesterday. A 
flood of tender memories swept over his soul. When the 
reader had finished and glanced toward the bed, he was 
in tears. It was a strange event ; he had not shed a tear 
in many years. Seeing the lady looking at him, he was 
ashamed of his weakness and tried to appear uncon- 
cerned. But she saw the tears and rejoiced and thanked 
God. 

The next day, when Mrs. Castle sat down to read, with 
a work of fiction in her hands, Carter made signs to her 
to read in the Bible. This she was only too glad to do. 
After that it was the Bible every day, and many hours 
every day. The invalid was very attentive and greatly 
interested. He had frequent periods of weeping and 
was no longer ashamed of his tears. 

Meanwhile the paralyzed man was regaining the use 
of his physical powers, more and more. He got so that 
he could articulate a few words. One day Mrs. Castle 
made out this sentence: “Do you think your husband 
would forgive me?” Of course her answer was an em- 
phatic “Yes.” “Will God forgive such a wretch?” he 
managed to ask. The lady’s answer was God’s own an- 
swer : “though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as 
white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they 
shall be as wool.” Then he asked for a piece of paper 
and a pencil, and wrote out a most humble and thorough 
confession of his sins, addressing it to God and to his 
servant, Wesley Castle. Handing it to Mrs. Castle, 
with the request that she would give it to her husband, 
133 


The Victories of Wesley Castle. 

he lay back upon his pillow with a look of peace and con- 
tentment such as his face had never worn before, since 
he was an innocent child. 

Then there was a long conversation between the min- 
ister and the invalid, in which, of course, the minister 
did most of the talking. But they both wept very 
freely; and they pressed each other’s hand; and they 
looked reconciliation, and friendship, and love into each 
other’s eyes. And the minister prayed. His wife 
thought she had never heard him pray so before. She 
never had; for he had never had such a case before to 
present to the throne of grace. O, what a prayer it was ! 
And that godly woman prayed, as only a woman can 
pray. And the poor sinner prayed for himself, as best 
he could. Those prayers went up to heaven like sweet- 
est incense. “Likewise there was joy in the presence of 
the angels over” that repenting and converted sinner. 

A week later a special prayer meeting was held at the 
parsonage. Fifteen or twenty of the most Spirit-filled 
members of the Littlefield Church were present. After 
that meeting Carter was out of bed, well in body and 
full of the Holy Ghost. A more completely trans- 
formed man never was known. He did not look like the 
old Carter. The red hair and freckled face were still 
there; but there was a new light and a greater depth in 
those blue eyes, which seemed to transfigure the whole 
aspect of the man. His speech, his manners, his dress 
were changed. The old swagger and bravado and cow- 
boy ways utterly disappeared. He was mild and gentle 
and tender and sweet. He was a perfect gentleman. 
Everybody was attracted to him. All his old habits were 
gone for ever. His strongest passion now, next to love 
for Christ, was love for the man whom he had so in- 
134 


Love Suffereth Long, and Is Kind. 

tensely hated and tried to kill. He stayed at Littlefield 
for some weeks, helping the pastor in his work and win- 
ning many souls whom no one else could reach. He 
often related his experience; but he wisely left out those 
darkest chapters, his fight with the professor and the at- 
tempted crime on the Voorhes Hill road. Those inci- 
dents the Castles kept to themselves. 

Carter went back to Fairview; confessed his crimes to 
Prof. Pelton; made restitution so far as he could with 
money; and then returned to Hew Mexico. He is now a 
flaming evangelist among the cow-boys and miners of the 
far West, preaching that salvation saves and that all the 
saved may be filled with the Holy Ghost, and winning 
many souls to shine in Christ’s crown and in his own. 

Wesley Castle’s first year in the ministry was near its 
close. The Conference was to sit in the first week of 
October, and the fourth Quarterly Conference was held 
about the middle of September. That body passed a 
unanimous resolution, asking the reappointment of the 
present pastor for another year. But the pastor said: 
“Ho.” “Under your labors, the membership of the 
charge has grown to five hundred, or will when the pro- 
bationers have been received into full membership,” 
they said; “and we can, and will, pay you a thousand 
dollars, if you will come back.” 

The pastor replied: “If the Bishop and Presiding 
Elder say I must, of course, I shall come back. But I 
shall ask to be sent to a new field. Some other man can 
take care of the work here as well as I, and I will go and, 
with the help of God, stir up some other dead commun- 
ity.” The Presiding Elder said he thought Brother 
Castle was right, and so the Quarterly Conference broke 
up with many tears. 


135 


The Victories of Wesley Castle. 

At the parsonage the Presiding Elder and the pastor 
had a long talk. It would be impossible to repeat the 
conversation exactly; but it was something like this : 

Said the Presiding Elder : “I want you to go to the 
First Church in the city of Dorchester. You are too 
talented and too well educated to stay on such a charge 
as this. They want a young man like you, and already 
have their eyes on you. I do not know that the Bishop 
can he persuaded to appoint a man who has not yet been 
admitted into full connection in the Conference, and is 
unordained, to such a charge as that; hut First Church 
Dorchester generally has its own way. They pay 
twenty-five hundred dollars and an elegant parsonage, 
and if they are determined to have you, they will get 
you. I want you to go there; and I think I can get 
them to ask for you. Their fourth Quarterly Conference 
will be held to-morrow night. The subject of a pastor 
for next year will come up then. Their present pastor 
has stayed as long as the law allows. You are my man 
for the place, above all others.” 

The young minister blushed and said that he did not 
think he had experience and ability for such a place ; and 
that some older man was entitled to it. 

The Presiding Elder replied: “You can fill the bill 
exactly. And if it is not you, it will be some other young 
man; for First Church is determined to have a young 
man.” 

Then after a long pause and a good deal of hemming 
and hawing, Doctor Bateman, the Presiding Elder, said : 
“But, Brother Castle, there is one thing I must tell you. 
You can’t go to First Church, Dorchester, unless you 
change your style of preaching.” 

136 


Love Suffereth Long, and Is Kind. 

“What’s the matter with my style of preaching,” 
asked the young man. 

“I don’t mean the style of your preaching exactly,” 
said the Elder. “Your style is fine. I don’t know a 
man in the Conference whose style of preaching I like 
better than yours. But I mean the things you say when 
you preach. You pitch into sin too fiercely. You 
preach against playing cards and dancing and theater- 
going and wine-drinking and all the other things which 
people do which you think are not right. That will do 
here in the country. But it will never do in the city of 
Dorchester. If you should preach that way in First 
Church, you would have to leave at the end of the first 
year, and you would hardly have a friend that year. 
Nearly all the prominent people in First Church go to 
theater, and have card parties and dances in their homes, 
and scarcely ever go to prayer meeting. Some of them 
have wine on their tables. Then they don’t believe in 
revivals. You will have to go easy on that subject, and 
get all your converts quietly from the Sunday-school and 
the Young People’s Society. You can’t pitch in and get 
sinners converted as you do here. You will have to go 
slow and be conservative and please the rich and worldly 
folks who manage the church.” 

“Why, Dr. Bateman,” said Wesley, “do you think I 
have been harsh and severe and extreme and fanatical 
here on this charge? Have I not preached the truth 
lovingly and in the spirit of the Master, and have not the 
results justified the course I have taken ? If I have not 
been preaching as I ought why have you not criticised 
me and taught me a better way ?” 

“I have no fault whatever to find with you,” said the 
Elder, “so far as this charge is concerned. You have 
137 


The Victories of Wesley Castle. 

accomplished more here in one short year than all your 
predecessors have accomplished in forty years. But the 
kind of preaching and the kind of work you have done 
here will not succeed in First Church, Dorchester. If 
you were to preach there as you have here, you would 
tear the Church all to pieces.” 

“Have I preached anything here but the truth?” 
meekly asked the young preacher. 

“No. So far as I know you have preached the truth, 
just as we all believe it. But there are some truths 
which it will not do to preach in some places. We must 
please the rich and influential, you know, and keep them 
in the Church. I want you to preach the truth of 
course; but you must preach it in such a way that no- 
body will take offense.” said Dr. Bateman. 

“Is that the way Jesus did? When he found that the 
wealthy and influential scribes and Pharisees did not 
like his preaching, did he change it and trim the sharp 
corners off the truth so that they would give him their 
support?” asked the pastor. 

“No, I suppose not,” said the Doctor, with consider- 
ale sharpness; “but the times have changed, and we must 
adapt ourselves to the spirit of the age in which we live. 
I have been in the ministry much longer than you have, 
and I have found that those ministers succeed the best 
and get, and keep, the best places who best adapt them- 
selves to their surroundings and know how to give the 
public what it wants. And now, while I have this oppor- 
tunity, I want to say to you — something that has been 
on my mind for a good while — that if you will change 
your way of preaching, and stop denouncing popular 
sins, and avoid giving offense to high-toned sinners, and 
leave out all references to eternal punishment, and study 
138 


Love Suffereth Long, and Is Kind. 

to please, and lay yourself out to preach fine literary ser- 
mons, as I know you can, you can, in time, have any 
appointment in this, or any other, conference; you can 
go to the top; perhaps you can be Bishop some time. 
But if you keep on as you are doing now, you will never 
get above a six, or eight, hundred dollar appointment, 
or possibly a thousand. There are two courses open to 
you. Keep on in your present path, and your minis- 
terial life will prove a failure. Get into the other path, 
and you will make a grand success. I can’t bear to have 
a young man with your natural ability and education 
throw himself away.” The Doctor spoke with great 
warmth and grew very red in the face. Wesley was so 
astonished at what he had just heard that he could not 
make any reply. So the Presiding Elder went on: 
“There is one thing more. You must not preach holiness 
so much. You have got the reputation all through the 
District, of being a ‘holiness crank !’ Now that will kill 
you sure. I stand up for you and tell them that you are 
nothing of the sort. They make that objection at Eirst 
Church. Now I am very much interested in you. I 
am proud of you. I want you to succeed. If you will 
promise me that you will heed the advice which I have 
kindly given you, I can almost guarantee you First 
Church, Dorchester, as your next appointment. Other- 
wise, I see nothing but disappointment and failure be- 
fore you.” 

It was a long time before the young minister could 
reply. Not because he was tempted to make the promise 
required; but because he was so astonished that a Chris- 
tian minister and a Presiding Elder could talk that way. 
At length he said: “Doctor Bateman, I am amazed at 
what I have heard from your lips. Your idea of the 
139 


The Victories of Wesley Castle. 

ministry and mine differ radically. When God called 
me to preach, he called me to preach his truth just as I 
find it in the Bible. That I am fully resolved to do. I 
have flung away my reputation and all thought of world- 
ly and ecclesiastical honor. I shall preach the truth as I 
understand it, and do all I can to snatch the souls of 
my fellow men from everlasting burnings, if I go to the 
poor-house for it. I am not a holiness crank, or any 
other kind of a crank. I am not fanatical. I am not 
extreme. I preach the Bible and Methodist doctrine and 
the Methodist Discipline. Of course, I preach holiness; 
I could not preach the gospel, if I did not. But I do not 
preach holiness, distinctively, all the time, nor quarter 
of the time. I preach upon as great a variety of gospel 
themes, I venture to affirm, as any minister in the Con- 
ference. You know that those who hate the Wesleyan 
doctrine of entire sanctification would charge a man with 
preaching it all the time, if he were to preach it definite- 
ly once a quarter. Doctor Bateman, I have always loved 
and respected you. I know that you are my friend. I 
know that you have far more experience and wisdom 
than I have. But I cannot accept the advice which you 
have just given me ; if I should, I know I should lose my 
soul.” 

That ended the conversation. Wesley Castle had 
gained another victory. But it cost something, as all 
victories do. The next time he met his Presiding Elder, 
the Doctor treated him with great coldness. At confer- 
ence not a word was spoken to him about his appoint- 
ment by the Bishop, or a Presiding Elder, or a repre- 
sentative from any church; and he spoke to no one on 
that subject. He possessed his soul in perfect peace. 
At the close of the session he was read off for a charge 
140 


Love Suffereth Long, and Is Kind. 

he had never heard of, under a Presiding Elder who was 
a total stranger to him. Evidently Dr. Bateman had 
dropped him in disgust. 

The name of Wesley Castle’s new charge was New- 
port. There was one preaching place, a pretty, medium- 
sized church, in a village of about a thousand inhabit- 
ants, on the banks of a small river and a canal. The 
membership of the Church was two hundred. The sal- 
ary was five hundred dollars, with the use of a comfort- 
able parsonage. 

The preacher went to his new field of labor full of 
faith, hope and courage. But he soon discovered that 
he was in a very hard place. There were many reasons 
for this. In the first place the whole community was 
greatly stirred up over a split in the Church and the 
starting of a rival organization. For twenty-five years 
the Methodist Church had been the only church in New- 
port. Prior to that time an unsuccessful attempt had 
been made to establish Presbyterianism, and a church 
edifice had been built. But the enterprise failed, and 
the building became the property of a “Deacon” Norton, 
who lived in Newport and attended the Methodist 
Church, but belonged to another denomination in a 
neighboring town. 

Connected with the Methodist Church, or congrega- 
tion, was a large and influential family named Babing- 
ton. The head of the family was a man of sixty named 
Julius. He kept a store, had some money, was very in- 
sinuating and captivating in his manners toward those 
whom he wished to use and, through political influence 
at the State Capital, controlled a section of the canal and 
the hiring and discharging of all the lock-tenders and the 
laborers who kept the water-way in repair. In one way 
141 


The Victories of Wesley Castle. 

and another the Babingtons managed to have half of the 
people of Newport under their combined thumb, and to 
run the only church in the place. 

One of the sons of Julius Babington was a blind man 
named Joseph. He and his wife and a cousin were the 
only Babingtons who actually belonged to the Church. 
Joseph, or Joe as everybody called him, was notorious 
for his cunning, for his ability to pull the wool over peo- 
ple’s eyes and to cheat them out of their very teeth, and 
for his violent and revengeful temper. Although he was 
blind, he made a good (or bad) living by shaving notes. 
He and his wife quarreled like cats and dogs. And yet 
they belonged to the Methodist Church. No pastor, 
who had ever been in Newport, would have had the 
courage to expel a Babington, if he had committed mur- 
der. 

But Joe Babington got out of sorts with his pastor, for 
some reason, and the whole Babington tribe withdrew, 
swearing eternal vengeance against the Methodist 
Church. They went to Deacon Norton and said: 
“Come ! let’s start a new church. W e’ll make it a church 
of your denomination and we’ll tear that cursed old 
Methodist Church all to pieces.” Deacon Norton jumped 
at the chance of doing such a Christian deed as to de- 
stroy a sister denomination. He donated his hall, the old 
Presbyterian Church. He poured out his money like 
water. The building was transformed into a neat and 
beautiful house of worship. The great denomination to 
which Deacon Norton and his family and a few other 
Newportites belonged adopted the ill-begotten ecclesias- 
tical brat. And a pastor was called and duly installed. 

Such was the state of things when the newly-appointed 
Methodist minister arrived in Newport. Fully half of the 
142 


Love Suffereth Long, and Is Kind. 

former Methodist congregation had gone to the Babing- 
ton Church ; many others seemed on the point of going ; 
those who remained were discouraged; and such a spirit 
of strife and hatred had been engendered among all 
classes of people that it was next to impossible to do any- 
thing in the way of getting men and women converted 
to God. 

The further history of the Babington Church ought to 
be recorded. The finale was reached after Wesley Cas- 
tle left Newport. The Babingtons and their lick-spittles, 
being the majority, dismissed the pastor and called Joe 
Babington, the blind note-shaver and wife-beater, to be 
their shepherd. Against the bitter protest of Deacon 
Norton and a few others, they got a denominational 
council to ordain and install him. They expelled Deacon 
Norton, and his family, and his friends, and all who 
would not be the slaves of the Babingtons; and Newport 
saw, what is spoken of in the Bible, “the blind leading 
the blind.” The rest of the proverb came true: “both 
fell into the ditch.” Joe Babington soon died, under the 
curse of God. His father and mother did not long sur- 
vive him. The rest of the family were scattered. And 
their spurious, so-called “church” came to naught. 

Deacon Norton, in telling the story of the Babington 
Church, and his connection and disconnection with it, 
said that it reminded him of an incident he had read: 
“A man bought a piece of land, on which was a barn and 
a very wild mule. He wanted to get the mule into the 
barn. This he succeeded in accomplishing, after a vast 
amount of coaxing. But no sooner was the mule in the 
barn than he turned around and kicked the man out.” 

The first reason why Wesley Castle found Newport a 
very hard charge was that he could not do anything, or 
143 


The Victories of Wesley Castle. 

much of anything, for the salvation of souls, on account 
of the strife and war which existed in connection with 
the Babingtons and their pretended “church.” Hot to 
be able to get sinners to Christ and believers into the ex- 
perience of full salvation was extremely disheartening 
and painful to such a minister as Wesley Castle. He was 
not in the ministry to kill time, or to make a living. 

In the second place, the people received him very 
coldly. His predecessor had been exceedingly popular 
with all classes, till the Babington fight began, and those 
who remained in the Church loved him all the more be- 
cause the Babingtons hated and persecuted him. When 
Elder Sweet left, at the end of the full term, almost all 
the people declared that they could not, and would not, 
like the next minister. That vow they fully kept. They 
thought they could not be loyal and true to Elder Sweet, 
if they did not hate and persecute Elder Castle. Their 
hearts were so small and microscopic that they could not 
love two of God’s servants at the same time. And so 
they shut him out of their hearts, and kept their hearts 
doubly locked against him as long as he was on the 
charge. They simply would not love him; they would 
not speak well of him; they would not think well of him. 
Wesley Castle was a very sensitive and affectionate man. 
He soon discovered the state of things. He saw some- 
thing was wrong the first Sunday. The atmosphere of 
the church seemed frosty. Only a few came up to speak 
to him, after the sermon; and he could see that the 
cordiality of most of them was forced and unreal. The 
consciousness that he was disliked and repelled grew 
upon him, and grieved him to his heart. 

There was an additional reason why the members of 
the Newport Church did not, and would not, like their 
144 


Love Suffereth Long, and Is Kind. 

new pastor. His reputation had come before him. He 
was reported to be a “holiness crank.” “He was alto- 
gether too good for anything. He wanted everybody to 
be so awfully good. He didn’t want anybody to have a 
good time. He didn’t think young people should ever 
have any fun. He never laughed himself, and thought 
it was a sin for anybody to laugh. He preached nothing 
but holiness sermons, from one year’s end to another.” 

The doctrine of Entire Sanctification, as it is taught 
in the Holy Scriptures and in the writings of John Wes- 
ley, was very unpopular in the Newport Church. There 
was a special reason for this. The only persons in the 
Church who had ever professed to enjoy the “blessing” 
were a Brother and Sister Thorne, who were cranky and 
disagreeable and hateful to the last degree. There were 
no two persons in the whole Church who had so little of 
the spirit of Christ — so everybody declared — and yet they 
professed to have the most. Five years before Sister 
Thorne came home from camp meeting and said that she 
was “wholly sanctified.” Immediately after she raised a 
big row in the choir, of which she was a member, and 
acted as though she was possessed of the devil. Every- 
body said : “If that is sanctification, I hope I shall never 
catch it.” And so, instead of going to God’s word, and 
the writings of the holy men and women, to find out 
what sanctification is, they set their eyes on those mis- 
taken professors and hated and resisted the truth with 
all their might. The very words “sanctification” and 
“holiness” and “perfect love” and the “baptism of the 
Holy Ghost” were a stench in the nostrils of nearly all 
the members of the Newport Church. 

Wesley Castle soon found this out. The first time he 
preached upon the subject of holiness the congregation 
145 


The Victories of Wesley Castle. 

looked as though they had been eating choke-cherries. 
As soon as he came out of the pulpit many came up to 
him and assaulted him violently with bitter and hateful 
words. 

That was a hard and bitter year indeed. The minister 
kept sweet, if his name was not Sweet, and the people 
did hate him and punish him because he was Wesley 
Castle instead of Barnabas Sweet. God greatly blessed 
him in preaching. He preached the very best he could, 
speaking upon a great variety of themes, trying to avoid 
seeming to harp upon one string. He could not leave 
out holiness; for he had the experience in his soul, and 
it gave a divine and heavenly tinge to all his preaching. 
But not one in ten, or even twenty, of his discourses was 
definitely on that subject. He preached with power and 
unction and joy; but his preaching seemed to do no 
good. It was like throwing a rubber ball against a stone 
wall. The people would not receive the truth from him. 
And so the word of God which he spoke bounded back 
into his own heart. 

Most of the people did nothing but criticise and find 
fault. The minister could not do, or say, anything right. 
Of course they disliked the minister’s wife. They were 
true to the proverb: “Hate me; hate my dog.” The 
Castles were virtually ostracized by the whole commun- 
ity. Everybody, almost, shunned the parsonage as 
though its inmates had had the small-pox. Strangers 
moving into the place, who preferred the Methodist 
Church, were driven to the other church by the hostile 
criticisms uttered against the Methodist pastor by mem- 
bers of his own flock. False and damaging reports con- 
cerning him were set in circulation through all the sur- 
146 


Love Suffereth Long, and Is Kind. 

rounding country, so that other churches would not want 
him for pastor. 

Wesley Castle knew all this. He hardly ever went 
upon the street but he heard some mean thing which 
some member of the Church had said about him. All 
this was torture to his sensitive soul. It soon began to 
tell upon his physical health. He lost his appetite. He 
was troubled with insomnia. He ran down in weight 
from 180 to 150 pounds. His step lost much of its elas- 
ticity ; and his eyes, much of their sparkle and fire. 

One Sunday morning, about two months before the 
end of the conference year, he was not in the pulpit 
when the bell ceased to toll. Mrs. Castle came in and 
whispered to the class-leader. That official went into the 
altar and announced to the congregation that there 
would be no preaching, because the Pastor was danger- 
ously sick. A few persons went out of the house with 
stinging consciences; they were beginning to realize 
what they had done. 



147 


VIII. 


r 

Love Believeth All Things. 

It may seem incredible that a man so manly, so robust, 
so strong-willed, so heroic and, above all, so full of faith 
and of the Holy Ghost as Wesley Castle is represented 
to have been should be sick in bed, and “dangerously 
sick,” because of any neglect and unkindness on the part 
of the people over whom he had been appointed pastor. 
But it should be remembered that he was only a man, 
and a very sensitive man too. He was full of faith and 
of the Holy Ghost; but he carried this treasure in an 
earthen vessel. So long as he retained the gift of the 
Holy Ghost, he was without sin; but he was not without 
feeling. Indeed his ability to feel mental and physical 
pain was all the greater because he was cleansed from all 
sinful passions and motives. 

A man might willingly carry a heavy burden on his 
back, for one whom he loved, and yet the load might 
crush him to the earth. The Pastor of Newport Church 
felt nothing but love toward all his people. He was 
willing to endure all their criticism and fault-finding and 
abuse, as long as God should will. But the burden was 
too much for his physical endurance. The unkindness 
of those whom he loved, and for whose salvation he 
would gladly have died, broke his heart in a figurative 
sense, and almost broke his literal, physical heart. 

The coldness and bitterness and hostility of the Metho- 
dists of Newport, and of the people generally, and the 
consequent impossibility of doing anything for their 
spiritual uplifting, so affected Wesley Castle’s body, 
through his mind and soul, that he was prostrated by a 
148 


Love Believeth All Things. 

severe attack of heart disease. It came upon him Sun- 
day morning, after an almost sleepless night, while he 
was on his knees, praying for grace and strength for the 
work of the day. The doctor came and stayed till noon. 
He did not think that the minister had any organic dis- 
ease; but declared that, if he survived this attack, he 
must not enter the pulpit again for several months. 
To Mrs. Castle he said : “You ought to get your hus- 
band out of this god-forsaken hole. It is the meanest 
community I ever knew. I would leave to-morrow, if I 
could. If the Elder would get away, and would make up 
his mind never to come back, I think he would be per- 
fectly well in a month.” 

“But how can he leave, Doctor? Conference is only 
two months away, and there are a thousand things to do 
in closing up the year, beside the preaching,” said Mrs. 
Castle. 

“I’d like to preach for him once,” said the doctor. 
“I’d like to tell those hypocrites what I think of them. 
It would do me good, whether it did them, or not. But 
he’s got to get out of here anyway, or die. Preaching ! 
What difference does it make whether anybody preaches 
here or not? I tell you preaching is wasted on these 
folks. If the twelve Apostles should rise from the dead 
and come and preach in Newport, it wouldn’t do a bit of 
good. The members of this Church over here would 
drum them out of town; and their divine Master too, if 
he were with them.” 

On the way out the doctor met the class-leader at the 
door. “How is the Elder ?” asked the man who had led 
the opposition against his pastor, whom, as a loyal Metho- 
dist, he was bound to believe the Lord had sent. 

149 


The Victories of Wesley Castle. 

“How is the Elder?” said the doctor, putting all the 
vinegar and gall he could into his voice and face. “I 
should think you would be asking about the man you 
have murdered. Go back and gather that gang together 
that you call a church, and tell them to put on sack-cloth 
and ashes and ask the Almighty to forgive them for kill- 
ing a man so much above them that the best of them is 
not fit for a mat for him to wipe his feet. I am no 
Christian; I am an infidel ; you think I am on the way to 
hell. But if I thought I was a thousandth part as mean 
as you are, I would go out into the woods and hate my- 
self to death.” 

As soon as the minister was well enough to travel, he 
locked up the parsonage and went, with his wife, to his 
father’s farm. There he stayed till one week before con- 
ference. He had taken all the collections, in money or 
pledges. He was sure he could not do any good by 
preaching to that people; he was only killing himself, 
and adding to their condemnation. He went back; col- 
lected in the money for the benevolences; received what 
little the Stewards had for him on salary (it brought his 
total receipts for the year up to less than three hundred 
dollars); preached his farewell sermon, full of love, 
without a word of scolding or censure; and went to con- 
ference. He felt that the year had been a total failure, 
so far as doing anything for God and souls was con- 
cerned. And yet he was full of joy and of the Holy 
Ghost; and he had fully recovered his bodily health and 
strength. 

A committee of three came to conference to get a 
preacher for First Church, Dorchester. There was 
going to be a vacancy, because the man sent them the 
year before had fallen heir to a large fortune, through 
150 


Love Believeth All Things. 

his wife, and had, at the same time, contracted a very 
troublesome form of ministerial sore-throat. 

During the year something very delightful had taken 
place in connection with First Church. A National 
Camp-meeting for the promotion of Christian Holiness 
had been held near the city, under the management of 
some of the best and wisest men in Methodism. Noth- 
ing but Methodist doctrine was preached; all fanaticism 
and wild-fire were kept out; all side-shows were strictly 
prohibited; and all the results were most blessed, in 
every way. Many of the members of First Church at- 
tended this feast of tabernacles; and some fifty of them 
experienced the blessing of “perfect love,” through the 
mighty baptism of the Holy Ghost. Among the fifty 
were some of the most influential men and women in all 
that society. They went home, full of the fire of love, 
and went to work to get the entire Church converted and 
sanctified. They organized a Tuesday evening holiness 
meeting; they brought holiness to the front in the regu- 
lar church prayer meeting; they circulated tracts and 
periodicals and books on the subject of the “higher life.” 
Their spirit was so sweet and their methods were so wise 
that they accomplished a vast amount of good, and only 
a little opposition was aroused. When they found that 
they were to have a new pastor, they united in prayer 
that God would send them a man who would preach the 
Wesleyan doctrine of entire sanctification, and who 
could preach it out of his own experience. At the same 
time they set to work to answer their own prayers. They 
soon made up their minds that Wesley Castle was the 
man they wanted. 

At the fourth Quarterly Conference the subject of a 
new preacher came up. There were three parties. 

151 


The Victories of Wesley Castle. 

About one-third of the members wanted a holiness man. 
One-third were decidedly opposed to that idea. The 
other one-third did not care. In the first third were two 
very influential men, the District Attorney, James West- 
on, who made an official visit at the yellow parsonage 
when Wesley Castle was pastor at Littlefield, and Ches- 
ter Eeynolds, Wesley’s most intimate friend at Mount 
Caesar College. The latter gentleman had married the 
only child of the wealthiest merchant of Dorchester and 
was his father-in-law’s partner in business. These men 
succeeded in getting a resolution through the Quarterly 
Conference asking the appointment of Wesley Castle to 
be their pastor, and were put on the committee to go to 
Conference and secure their choice. The vote asking 
for Wesley was not unanimous at the first; but it was 
made so by the votes of several brethren who did not 
want the board to seem to be divided, and who thought 
they would like to have Brother Castle for pastor, in 
spite of his holiness, because of his acknowledged ability 
in the pulpit. And so the Bishop, when he announced 
the appointments at the close of the conference session, 
read this: “Dorchester, First Church, Wesley Castle.” 

First Church was regarded, by all the ministers in the 
Conference, as a very desirable appointment. The salary 
was twenty-five hundred dollars. The membership was 
over six hundred. The church edifice was a splendid 
structure, costing one hundred and fifty thousand dollars 
and containing sittings for one thousand persons. The par- 
sonage was good enough to be the residence of a million- 
aire. All the preachers said that Dorchester First 
Church was an unusually fine appointment for a young 
fellow like Castle, who had just come from a five hun- 
dred dollar charge and had just been ordained Deacon. 

152 


Love Believeth All Things. 

Our hero was not all elated by his appointment. If 
he had dared to choose, he would greatly have preferred 
a humbler place. When he knew that he was likely to 
be sent to First Church, he was strongly inclined to go 
to the Presiding Elder, or Bishop, and protest against it. 
But after earnest prayer, he made up his mind to keep 
his hands off. He did just what he would have done if 
he had been told that the cabinet had decided to send 
him to the worst charge in the conference ; he did noth- 
ing. When he heard the appointments read, and knew 
his destiny, he was tempted to be afraid, and his heart 
began to sink within him. The next instant, a passage of 
Scripture came to his mind in such a way, which he 
could not describe, that he knew that it was a message 
from God to him : “Be not afraid, but speak, and hold 
not thy peace : for I am with thee, and no man shall set 
on thee to hurt thee: for I have much people in this 
city.” The last phrase seemed to be emphasized; and the 
young man was sure that it meant that there would be a 
great revival in Dorchester, under his labors. So he 
went to his new field full of courage and faith, with the 
earnest of victory in his soul. 

Dorchester was a city of thirty thousand inhabitants. 
It contained many factories and a large population of 
laboring men and their families. It was notorious for 
the corruption of its municipal government. It had 
more whiskey saloons than any other city of its size in 
the State. There were four Methodist Episcopal 
Churches, of which the First was the largest and most 
influential. All the other leading Protestant denomin- 
ations were well represented; and there were several 
large Roman Catholic churches. 

The First Methodist Episcopal Church of Dorchester 
153 


The Victories of Wesley Castle. 

was made up of all sorts of people. Some were very 
rich; some were very poor. Some lived on the finest 
avenues in the city, and moved in the most aristocratic 
circles of society; some came from the poorest dwellings 
on the worst alleys. But there was a preponderance of 
wealthy and well-to-do families. 

Spiritually First Church was a mixture of very good, 
good, indifferent, bad and very bad. There was a large 
body of very spiritual members, as devoted and holy as 
any church ever contained since the day of Pentecost. 
At the other extreme was a lot of people who never went 
to prayer meeting, who had wine on their tables, and 
went to the theater, and card parties, and balls, and 
horse-races, and were just like the world, only they had 
their names on the church-roll, and came to church Sun- 
day morning — that is, when the weather and everything 
else was just to their mind. From these extremes the 
Church graded up and down to a considerable class, in 
the middle, whose outward lives and conduct were with- 
out fault, but who never gave any evidence that they 
knew what conversion and experimental religion are. 

Other facts about First Church, worthy of mention, 
are that it counted among its members the mayor of the 
city, a notorious politician whose reputation was as rank 
as limburger cheese; the proprietor of the most widely- 
circulated Sunday newspaper in the county; the chief 
stockholder and president of the trolley street-car line, 
which, of course, ran its cars every day in the week; a 
wealthy capitalist who owned a row of buildings contain- 
ing the worst whiskey dives and gambling dens in the 
city; and a trustee and class-leader who, it was generally 
believed, was accustomed to go from the Sunday morning 
service to a neighboring saloon and get a drink of beer, 
154 


Love Believeth All Things. 

or something stronger, and come back and lead his class. 
To what place such a leader as that would lead his class, 
it would not be pleasant to conjecture. It would not 
seem that the Almighty could greatly revive his work in 
and through a church which would tolerate such a nest of 
unclean birds as that. But the new pastor began his 
work strong in the conviction that he would see a mighty 
work of grace wrought under his leadership. 

Wesley Castle’s faith took in large things. He be- 
lieved that he should see his own church filled with con- 
verted and wholly sanctified members; revivals, en- 
kindled from the altars of his church, in all the other 
congregations; the Sabbath rescued from desecration 
and neglect; the saloon and kindred haunts of vice ban- 
ished to their native place; the politics of the city washed 
pure and white; harmony and justice established between 
capital and labor; and the great mass of the people walk- 
ing in the ways of honesty, virtue and holiness. Al- 
though he was but one among a score of Christian pas- 
tors, and the youngest and least experienced of them all, 
he felt that, in a certain sense, God had sent him there 
to be the shepherd of shepherds, and to bring that whole 
city near to Him. He cherished this exalted ideal with 
the utmost modesty and self-distrust ; but with a mighty, 
and absolute faith in him who had said : “Fear not; for 
I have much people in this city.” 

How should this enormous task be accomplished ? 
What was the first thing to be done ? Should the preach- 
er begin by preaching on municipal reform ? Should he 
launch his thunder-bolts at the head of the mayor ? He 
might earn a reputation for courage and audacity by 
such a course; but it would not do the first particle of 
good. Should he preach against the saloon and the 
155 


The Victories of Wesley Castle. 

whiskey curse? Yes. He would give that devil his due, 
from time to time; but if that should be the only, or 
chief, burden of his preaching, nothing great would be 
accomplished. Should he blaze away at the Sunday 
papers and the Sunday cars ? He intended that his hear- 
ers should find out exactly what he thought on that sub- 
ject; but that kind of preaching alone would amount to 
nothing. Should he give a series of lectures on the rela- 
tions of capital and labor ? He did not believe that that 
was the mission of the gospel preacher. Should he make 
the air lurid with his denunciations of cards and dancing 
and the theater? His pulpit should not be silent in re- 
gard to those forms of evil ; but there was a better way, 
he thought, than to preach whole sermons on that sub- 
ject. Should he begin his pastorate by expelling the 
beer-drinking class-leader, and the trustee who rented his 
property for whiskey saloons, and the editor of the “Sun- 
day Telegram ?” He was determined that that should 
come, in the end, if they did not mend their lives or 
withdraw of their own accord; but to begin with a 
church trial would be beginning at the wrong end, he 
was sure. Should he gather the whole Church, or as 
many as would come, and ask them to pledge themselves 
to do, in every thing, as Jesus would do if he were in 
their place? That would be trying to gather grapes be- 
fore the planting of the vines. More than half the 
church were so untaught in spiritual things that they 
could not tell what Jesus would do; and so sinful that 
they would not do as Jesus would, if they could, and 
could not, if they would. Should he organize a lot of 
brotherhoods and sisterhoods, and societies for this pur- 
pose and for that? No. There was machinery enough 
156 


Love Believeth All Things. 

already. Not more wheels, but more power to run the 
wheels they had, was what they needed. 

In the opinion of Wesley Castle all the modern de- 
vices for reforming society and saving the world are de- 
lusive and vain. He preferred God’s more simple and 
reasonable way. He saw the Upas tree of sin, casting its 
dark shadow over Dorchester and the whole world and 
filling all the nations with poison and death. He saw 
that political corruption and Sabbath desecration and in- 
temperance and gambling and the various forms of vice 
are simply the fruit which grows upon the tree of sin. 
What good would it do to pluck off the fruit and cast it 
out of the garden? Immediately the tree would put 
forth other fruit of the same kind. What good would 
it do to cut off the branches ? Other branches, just like 
them, would grow out in their stead. To pluck off the 
fruit and cut off the branches of the Upas tree is man’s 
way. God’s way is to cut down the tree, and then put a 
charge of dynamite under the stump and blow it out of 
the ground. Wesley Castle had no faith in man’s way. 
He had perfect faith in God’s way. He said to himself : 
“What good would it do if I could smash the corrupt 
party machine which now rules this city? The same cause 
which produced this would soon produce another as bad, 
or worse. What good would it do if I could close all the 
saloons and gambling-dens ? The cause remaining, there 
would soon be as many haunts of vice as before. With 
the help of God I will destroy sin, which is the cause of 
municipal corruption, and drunkenness, and gambling, 
and Sabbath-desecration, and strife between employer 
and employee, and individual, family and social evil of 
every kind. Let others spend their time in shaking off 
the leaves of the Upas tree of sin, and in getting rid of 
157 


The Victories of Wesley Castle. 

the fruit, and in breaking off the twigs and in sawing off 
the branches. My labor shall go, with that of the Al- 
mighty, toward destroying the tree, trunk and roots.” 

Such language may seem like boasting. But the 
speaker was boasting in God, and not in himself. At 
another time he said: “There is a Upas tree in every 
human heart, unless God has taken it away. If there 
were no Upas in the heart of man, there would be none 
in the world. Conversion is the cutting down of the 
Upas. Entire sanctification is the pulling of the stump. 
When Brother Hobson, the beer-drinking class-leader, 
is converted, he will stop going to the saloon. When 
the saloon-keeper is converted, he will refuse to sell 
Brother Hobson beer, even if he should want it. When 
all the people of Dorchester are converted, nobody will 
drink whiskey, and nobody will want to sell whiskey. 
When the mayor is converted, and all the members of 
the Common Council, we shall have a clean city gov- 
ernment. When the editor of the Sunday Telegram is 
converted, there will be no Sunday Telegram. When 
all the people, or the vast majority of them, are con- 
verted and wholly sanctified, nobody will patronize the 
Sunday newspapers or Sunday cars, and there will be 
nothing but justice and good will between capitalist and 
laborer. My work shall be to get all the people, or as 
many as possible, converted and sanctified.” 

This enthusiastic and faith-full minister had many 
things to encourage him. There was Chester Reynolds, 
his old college classmate. Like Barnabas, he was “a 
good man, and full of the Holy Ghost and of faith.” 
He was also possessed of abundant wealth. He had the 
confidence of everybody. He gave about four hours a 
day to business, and the rest of his time, which he could 
158 


Love Believeth All Things. 

spare from rest and sleep, to the work of God. He was 
at the head of a city mission on Canal street, in a build- 
ing which he bought, unaided, for eighteen thousand 
dollars. He conducted a service there himself every 
Sunday afternoon, and supported a reformed man who 
lived in the building and kept the work going all the 
time. He owned a canal boat, fitted up as a floating 
church, a sort of salvation man-of-war, which threw 
gospel shells and spiritual dynamite into the devil's forts 
all along the canal for twenty miles. He also had a 
gospel wagon, a little chapel on wheels, in which a 
chosen band went out, every pleasant Sunday afternoon, 
and held gospel meetings in different parts of the city. 

Chester Reynolds knew scores of commercial travel- 
ers, and had led many of them to Christ. Back of the 
office, in the central store of the six groceries belonging 
to the firm of Rossiter & Reynolds, was a little private 
prayer room, the spiritual birthplace of many men, who 
came to the front room solely for worldly business, and 
were caught in the gospel net by that wise fisher of souls. 
One Wednesday evening, at the First Church prayer 
meeting, a stranger, relating his experience, said: “ I 
was traveling for a large tobacco house. I called at the 
office of Rossiter & Reynolds. Brother Reynolds said 
they did not deal in tobacco any more. I remained to 
chat a few moments. Before I knew it, we were talking 
upon religion. He made the conversation so interesting 
that I stayed, perhaps, twenty minutes. Then he asked 
me if I would not like a word of prayer. I said I would. 
We went into the little back room. I can't tell just 
what took place there, only he told God all about me; 
and, when I got up off my knees, I knew that my sins 
159 


The Victories of Wesley Castle. 

were forgiven and that I belonged to the heavenly 
family.” 

Chester Reynolds was the father of a large spiritual 
family; and he kept track of all his converts, and en- 
deavored, by personal conversation and by giving them 
books and tracts, to lead them into the enjoyment of the 
“second blessing,” as John Wesley calls it — entire sanc- 
tification, the baptism of the Holy Ghost. The money 
which he dispensed so freely was not all his own. Much 
of it belonged to his father-in-law. But father, daughter 
and son-in-law were all one in loyalty to Christ and love 
for souls. The pastor had the assurance that the three 
would stand by him and help him to hold up the ban- 
ner on which was emblazoned the cross and the motto 
“Holiness to the Lord.” 

Then there was James Weston, the District Attorney. 
Some people think a man cannot be a lawyer and a 
Christian too. But James Weston was a standing refu- 
tation of that stupid slander. He was a first-class lawyer 
and a first-class Christian. He was a man of command- 
ing influence in the Church and in the city. He loved 
the new minister as no other member of First Church 
could, because it was through his influence that he had 
been brought to Christ. It was no small encouragement 
to the young pastor to know that such a man would 
stand by him through thick and thin. 

Beside these four, there were more than fifty men 
and women, of the same spirit, whom some in the 
Church sneeringly called “the Holiness Crowd.” They 
did not all belong to the social and intellectual elite — 
though many of them did, — but they were all persons 
of solid character, who commanded universal respect. 
There was not one fanatic, or crank, or extremist among 
160 


Love Believeth All Things. 

them. But they had all heen baptized with the Holy 
Ghost and with fire. They constituted the pastor’s 
body guard. They were in the fullest sympathy with 
him in all his work. They were ready to do anything 
which he requested. They gathered every Sunday morn- 
ing for a half hour prayer meeting before the public 
service. They held the preacher up before God, in the 
arms of their faith, while he was preaching. The word 
reached the hearts of the luke-warm and unconverted 
red-hot, having passed through their hearts, which were 
all aflame with love to God and souls. 

In such circumstances the new pastor began his work 
at First Church, Dorchester. The first time he stood 
in the pulpit he looked into the eager faces of a congre- 
gation which filled the auditorium to its utmost capacity. 
His fame as a preacher had come before him. Every- 
body was expecting something well worth the hearing. 

A large chorus choir, behind the pulpit, led the con- 
gregation in singing the old-fashioned hymns which the 
preacher selected to match his discourse. The prayer 
came right from the minister’s heart, and lifted every 
Christian heart toward heaven, while it tugged mightily 
at every unbelieving heart. The text of the sermon 
was : “Follow holiness, without which no man shall see 
the Lord.” 

The sermon was not distinctively upon entire sanctifi- 
cation. It was much broader than that. It covered the 
whole subject of holiness, from the new birth of the 
soul to its glorification in heaven, and on into the cycles 
of eternity. The preacher described the holy state in 
which man was created. He showed how man lost his 
original perfection; how Jesus, the sinless man, God 
himself manifested in the flesh, came to earth and 
161 


The Victories of Wesley Castle. 

suffered and died that he might perfectly restore to man 
the divine image which he had lost; and how faith, fol- 
lowing repentance and consecration, is the sole condi- 
tion on man’s part by which he is to be made perfectly 
holy. He defined holiness. It is likness to God. It is 
likeness to Jesus Christ, God revealed. It is purity of 
action, word, thought, motive, feeling and desire. It is 
freedom from sin. It is whiteness of soul. It is beauty 
of character, the only real beauty possible to a human 
being. He described the several steps in what the text 
calls “following holiness.” The first is justification, the 
pardon of the actual sins which the sinner has com- 
mitted; regeneration, the implanting of the life of God 
in the soul and the impartation of power to keep from 
committing sin and to do the will of God; entire sancti- 
fication, the destruction of the carnal mind, the casting 
of all evil out of the heart; and growth in all virtue and 
goodness, extending through time and eternity. He ex- 
plained that sanctification, the becoming holy, is both 
negative and positive. On the negative side it is the emp- 
tying of the soul of all native and acquired impurity and 
sin; and is consummated, in an instant, in this life, by 
the power of Almighty God, on the simple condition 
of faith. On the positive side, sanctification is the fill- 
ing of the soul, which has been emptied of sin, with all 
virtue and goodness; and is a gradual work, because the 
capacity of the soul will never cease to enlarge in this 
world and in the world to come. He took, as an exam- 
ple, one of the Christian virtues — love. At the moment 
of regeneration love to God is implanted in the soul. 
But the opposing sin-principle remains. In entire sanc- 
tification God removes from the soul every thing which 
is opposed to love, so that it is made perfect in love. 


Love Believeth All Things. 

After that the souks capacity to love increases moment 
by moment, and the man never ceases to grow in that 
element of holiness which we call love. He asserted, 
and proved, that the only purpose of the gospel is to 
make men holy, and more holy; that there is nothing 
in true religion but holiness; that he who is opposed to 
holiness is opposed to the Christian religion and to its 
divine Author; and that every gospel sermon is a holi- 
ness sermon. 

In conclusion, the preacher drew a beautiful, a charm- 
ing, a fascinating picture of holiness, so that every 
saved person in the house felt: “I want, above all 
things, to be holy.” Then he painted such a vivid and 
horrible picture of sin that every person in the congre- 
gation who was living in the commission of any known 
sin or in the neglect of any known duty saw his own 
portrait and turned pale with shame and fright. He did 
not name any of the sins of the congregation. But he 
described sin. He held up the mirror in such a light 
that every sinner saw his own ugly features, and shud- 
deringly whispered : “That is I.” 

The congregation of First Church had never been so 
powerfully stirred before. As the people went out of 
the church, after the benediction, no man felt like 
speaking to his neighbor. Every one was busy with his 
own heart. Every one said to himself: “The Judge 
has come to this city,” not meaning the preacher, but 
God. Every sinner stood convicted before the judg- 
ment seat of conscience; and yet no one was angry at 
the preacher. 

The mayor of Dorchester said : “The preacher aimed 
that whole sermon at me. I am the sinner. I ought to 
get out of that vile political ring, and do what I can to 
163 


The Victories of Wesley Castle. 

purify the politics of this city.” The proprietor of the 
Sunday Telegram said : “The preacher aimed that 
whole sermon at me. I am the sinner. I ought to stop 
publishing a Sunday paper.” The president of the 
electric railroad said: “The preacher aimed that 
whole sermon at my head. I am the sinner. I ought to 
give the conductors and motor-men one day in the week 
for rest and worship.” The wealthy trustee who rented 
his buildings for saloons and gambling hells said : “The 
preacher shot that sermon at me. I am the sinner. I 
ought to turn all those vermin out of my buildings, as 
soon as the leases expire.” One of the stewards who 
kept a drug-store, and sold whiskey to some of the young 
men of the best families in the city, said: “That ser- 
mon was all for me. I am the sinner. I ought to stop 
sending men to hell by the drunkard’s railroad.” 
Brother Hobson, the leader of the Sunday noon class, 
said: “That sermon all belongs to me. I am the sin- 
ner. I will not go to the saloon to-day.” Scores of 
men and women who had not been in a prayer meeting 
for years, and who had been violating the Discipline of 
the Church, which they had sworn to obey, ever since 
they joined the Church, by playing cards and patron- 
izing theaters and attending dancing-parties, said : 
“That sermon belongs to me. I am the sinner. I must 
give up the world and serve the Lord with all my 
heart.” 

And yet the preacher had said nothing about political 
corruption, or Sabbath-desecration, or whiskey-selling, 
or whiskey-drinking, or gambling, or dancing, or the- 
aters. 

That Sunday morning hundreds were convicted “of 
sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment,” by the 

164 


Love Believeth All Things. 

Holy Spirit, under that holiness sermon. That night 
there were more sleepless pillows among the members 
of First Church, Dorchester, than the angels ever saw 
before. 

But the pastor never passed a more restful night in all 
his life. 


IX. 


The Sharp, Two-Edged Sword. 

The Rev. Wesley Castle had hardly begun his work 
in First Church when a mighty wave of Temperance 
reform struck the city of Dorchester. The causes of 
this phenomenon were many. In the first place, the 
Rum devil had become so rampant and outrageous that, 
at last, the friends of God and humanity had become 
aroused. Dorchester was one of the worst rum-ruled 
and rum-cursed cities on the face of the earth. If a 
prize had been offered for the greatest number of 
saloons, in proportion to the population, for the most 
crimes and lawlessness occasioned by strong drink, and 
for the largest army of young men marching to perdi- 
tion under the flag of king Alcohol, it is probable that 
Dorchester would have carried off the palm, with a wide 
interval between her and the second competitor. 

Under the administration of a Methodist mayor, and 
a common council a majority of whose members were 
brewers and saloon-keepers, everybody could get a 
license to sell liquor who wanted it, and not the slightest 
attempt was made to close the saloons on Sunday, or to 
enforce any of the laws against the free sale and use of 
intoxicating drinks. Things got to such a pass that it 
almost seemed as though rum ran in the gutters of the 
principal streets, and as though there was not a sober 
young man left in the city. The good people had really 
become alarmed, and were in a condition to be led, by 
the proper person, into doing something to stay the 
awful tide of ruin which was sweeping over the town. 
By using another figure of speech it might be said that 
166 


The Sharp, Two-Edged Sword. 

the public mind and conscience in Dorchester were like 
a mass of very combustible matter, ready to be set on 
fire by a single spark. 

Several such sparks were quickly supplied. Connected 
with Wesley Castle’s congregation were a man and wife, 
named Osgood. She was member of the Church, a 
Sunday school teacher, an earnest worker in every de- 
partment of religious effort, and a lady of the greatest 
culture and refinement. Everybody held her in the 
highest esteem. Her husband had been highly re- 
spected. He belonged to a good old Methodist family. 
He was a very popular and successful dentist. His 
patrons had been the most wealthy people in the city, 
and his income had been almost princely. But, alas, of 
late he had been drinking to excess. His practice had 
fallen off. He had gone from worse to worse, with rapid 
strides. He had frequent, and terrible, sprees, some- 
times lasting many days and even weeks; and all his 
friends, and his wife’s, were bewailing his dreadful fall 
and his swiftly approaching doom. 

One night Dr. Osgood came home, in a state of beast- 
ly intoxication, bringing a drunken companion with 
him, and one of the chief instruments of his profession. 
The two seized the lady of the house, and, while the 
assistant devil held the struggling and screaming 
woman, the other extracted every tooth in her head. 
She had been distinguished for the beauty and perfec- 
tion of her teeth ; and her husband had often descanted 
to his patrons and patients upon the subject, declaring 
that she did not know what the toothache was, that she 
had never lost a tooth, and that she had never had one 
filled or treated in any way. How, under the hellish 
frenzy inspired by the demon of strong drink, he vented 
167 


The Victories of Wesley Castle. 

his insane rage on that which had been his pride and 
boast. 

Left to herself till morning, the poor woman almost 
died of pain and terror and loss of blood and nervous 
shock. The immediate author of her misery was in still 
greater distress when he came to himself and knew what 
he had done. When the story of the strangely horrible 
outrage got out among the people, as it did in spite of the 
woman’s attempt to conceal it, a shudder went through 
the whole city, and men looked into each other’s faces 
and said : “How long shall we endure this unspeakable 
crime and curse ?” 

While everybody was talking about the Osgood case a 
still more startling event took place. In Wesley Castle’s 
flock were two young men named James Porter and 
Charles Toor. They had grown up in the Sunday 
school, and had professed religion and joined the 
Church. Their parents were neighbors, and they had 
been fast and intimate friends from early childhood. It 
was a strange thing to see one and not see both. The 
families to which they belonged were poor; but they 
had many friends among the best people in the city, and 
were universally respected and liked. Such had been 
their standing. But, like a majority of the young men 
of Dorchester, they had been sporting for a good while 
along the banks of the river of intemperance which ran 
so broad and deep through the city. They waded out 
farther and farther toward the middle of the stream of 
ruin and death. They often drank to excess. They 
sometimes got drunk. They ceased to be regular attend- 
ants at church and Sunday school. 

One day, when the machine-shop, where they worked, 
was shut down for repairs, they started out for a good 
168 


The Sharp, Two-Edged Sword. 

time. They drank several glasses of whiskey, during the 
day, in the drug-store of Brother Davis, one of the 
stewards of the Church to which they belonged. In the 
evening they came into the same store, at about ten 
o’clock, and each took a drink. They were disputing 
over some trifling thing when they entered. The dis- 
pute became warmer. Soon they began to fight. 
Brother Davis parted them and told them that, if they 
wanted to fight, they must get out of his store. Pushed 
partly by his hands and partly by his tongue, they moved 
toward the door, uttering angry and threatening words. 
Porter was the first to step upon the sidewalk. As he 
did so he turned and faced Toor, with a word of de- 
fiance upon his lips. At the same instant Toor struck 
him with a clasp knife, which, unnoticed, he had taken 
from his pocket and opened, as they were moving slowly 
toward the door. The blade pierced Porter’s heart, and, 
in half a minute, he lay dead upon the sidewalk. Toor 
dropped the bloody knife and fled. A week later he 
was brought back in irons and committed to jail, to 
await his trial. Subsequently he was sentenced to state 
prison for life. 

The next day the city was wild with excitement. The 
tragedy took place Monday night. The funeral ser- 
vices were held on Wednesday. The pastor of the First 
Church officiated. He was very calm, and said nothing 
about the cause of the young man’s death. But the 
daily papers of Saturday contained the notice that, in 
the evening of the next day, at the First Methodist 
Episcopal Church, the Kev. Wesley Castle would preach 
on the subject: “Who killed James Porter?” The 
church was jammed as full as it could hold, and hun- 
dreds were turned away. The preacher was all on fire 
169 


The Victories of Wesley Castle. 

with holy boldness and indignation. He laid the mur- 
der of Porter at the door of the Mayor and Common 
Council of the city, who appointed men on the board of 
excise who, they lmew, would license men to sell in- 
toxicating drinks; at the door of the excise commission- 
ers themselves; at the door of the man who sold the 
liquor which Toor drank that day; at the door of the 
voters who elected such a common council and mayor; 
and at the door of all the men and women in the city, 
who, by their examples, helped to keep alive the custom 
of drinking alcoholic beverages. The audience was 
most profoundly stirred, and amens and murmurs of ap- 
proval were heard from all over the house. 

When the preacher had finished a strange man, tall 
and swarthy, with a broad-brimmed hat in his hand, 
came striding down the aisle. Advancing to the front 
of the pulpit, and addressing the pastor, he asked the 
privilege of speaking a few words to the congregation. 
The pastor nodded assent. Then, facing the people, 
with flashing eyes and fierce gesticulation, he gave such 
an exhortation as they had never heard to rise up and 
wipe out the curse of intemperance from their beautiful 
city. Closing, he introduced himself as “Doctor Bacon, 
a reformed man and a Temperance Evangelist / 7 and in- 
vited them to go to the Opera House, the next evening, 
and hear him speak upon Temperance. Twelve hun- 
dred people went away from First Church, that night, 
in a very excited state of mind. Two of them were 
very angry, the Mayor and the proprietor of the drug 
store whose door step was stained with the blood of 
James Porter. They went home breathing out hatred 
and vengeance against the impudent and fanatical 
preacher who had dared to brand them as murderers. 

170 


The Sharp, Two-Edged Sword. 

From that time Wesley Castle had two enemies in Dor- 
chester, who would not hesitate to do any thing they 
possibly could to injure and destroy him. 

Monday night the Opera House was packed with peo- 
ple eager to hear Doctor Bacon. There was something 
mysterious and weird and fascinating about him. A per- 
son who heard him once could hardly help hearing 
him again. He did not seem to have much learning; 
but he had a kind of native eloquence which swept his 
audiences with irresistible power. He never said any- 
thing about himself, except that he had been a drunk- 
ard, and had been down to the very depths. One night 
he gave a description of delirium tremens. It was 
awful. He made his hearers see snakes and dragons and 
devils, and smell the smoke of the bottomless pit. He 
would not tell where he came from. But his dress and 
speech and manners indicated that his home had been 
in the remote Southwest. All Wesley Castle could get 
out of him was that he had known Carter, the New 
Mexico cow-boy, and the preacher made up his mind 
that he was one of Carter’s converts. 

Beginning with that Monday evening meeting was a 
long temperance campaign. Some of the most earnest 
Christian men in the city came forward and promised 
to be responsible for the cost of using the Opera House, 
and a majority of the pastors agreed to stand by the 
work. Doctor Bacon was awfully severe, and even sav- 
age, in his attacks on those whom he held responsible for 
the curse of intemperance, especially church-members 
who used alcoholic drinks, or had anything to do with 
the liquor traffic, and, most of all, ministers who opposed 
the reform movement which he was so earnest in pro- 
moting. He said a great many things which the pastor 
171 


The Victories of Wesley Castle. 

of the First Church could not approve. But he, and 
most of the other pastors, and a large proportion of the 
best men and women in the city, stood by him because 
they believed his motives were good, and that a great 
work was being accomplished for the reformation of the 
community. How could they do otherwise, when they 
saw hundreds of intemperate men signing the pledge, 
every night, and knew that the rum power of the city 
was fighting the movement with all the resources at its 
command ? 

Doctor Bacon was sometimes very personal in his re- 
marks. One night he gave special attention to one of 
the pastors, who had, that day, had a keg of beer rolled 
into his cellar. He did not call him by name; but he 
told who he was not, till everybody knew who he was. 
On another occasion he held up for the contempt and 
indignation of his audience a certain Methodist in the 
city who rented his buildings for saloon purposes. He 
called him a “hypocrite,” and declared that he was 
going straight to hell. Of course that greatly offended 
one of Mr. Castle’s wealthiest members, and made him 
feel unkindly toward his pastor for standing by the man 
who so bitterly denounced him. At another time he 
gave nearly a whole evening to the man in whose store 
the liquor was bought which made Toor murder Porter. 
In the most terrible language he invoked the curses of 
heaven on the man who could profess to be a Christian, 
and teach a class in Sunday school, and pass the bread 
and water in the love-feast, and, at the same time, sell 
that which turns men into murderers and sends their 
souls to hell. His denunciations were so awful that they 
almost made the hair rise on the heads of his hearers. 
They did not know that the English language was cap- 
172 


The Sharp, Two-Edged Sword. 

able of giving expression to such lurid, withering, blast- 
ing curses. He closed with a prophecy, and he seemed 
to be inspired as he uttered it. He declared that the 
vengeance of God would soon fall on that man in such 
a way that all would know that it was a punishment for 
his sins of hypocrisy, avarice and murder. Hobody who 
heard that prediction could ever forget it. Within a 
month, the druggist’s son, who was in business with him, 
a young man, seemingly, in perfect health, was smitten 
with apoplexy, on the street, and died, without coming 
to consciousness, a few hours after. A few months later 
the father was climbing a ladder, to the roof of his 
house, for some purpose, when he fell backward to the 
ground and broke his neck. When Mr. Davis’ death 
was reported, men looked in each other’s faces and said 
nothing; but no one could help recalling Doctor Bacon’s 
prophecy. 

And so the temperance reformation went on, till sev- 
eral thousand persons had signed the pledge; till a club 
of five hundred reformed drunkards and moderate- 
drinkers had been organized; till many saloon-keepers 
had poured their liquors into the gutter, and had gone 
out of the business; and till, seemingly, a public senti- 
ment had been created strong enough to utterly banish 
the licensed liquor traffic from the city at the next 
charter election. Everybody said that it was the greatest 
temperance revival that had ever visited that part of the 
world. 

Doctor Bacon departed, with the blessings of thou- 
sands and the curses of hundreds; the temperance meet- 
ings came to an end; and Wesley Castle resumed his 
regular work. By attending the meetings of the “Re- 
form Club,” of which all the pastors were honorary 
173 


The Victories of Wesley Castle. 

members; by visiting the reformed men, in their homes 
and places of employment, so far as he had time; by 
circulating temperance literature; and by frequently 
preaching upon temperance, in its various aspects, he did 
his best to preserve and extend the great temperance 
reformation. But he was soon compelled to see that 
things were going back to their former condition. With- 
in three months all but two of the men who left the 
saloon business had gone back. In the same time the 
attendance at the meetings of the “Reform Club” had 
diminished to one-quarter of what it was at the start. 
In six months three-quarters of the reformed drunkards 
had returned to their cups. By the time the charter 
election came around the sentiment of the voters had 
swung back to its old position of indifference to the evils 
of intemperance, and the old mayor and the whiskey 
aldermen were re-elected. And, in a year from the date 
of the killing of James Porter, as far as anybody could 
see, Dorchester was in as bad a condition as it had ever 
been. 

The pastor of First Church was one of the first to see 
that the reform chariot was running down hill. He did 
not wait till it was at the bottom. He began at once to 
preach the true reform. One Sunday morning he de- 
livered a discourse in which he told his hearers that he 
believed in reform clubs, and temperance pledges, and 
temperance lodges, and the W. C. T. U., and the Pro- 
hibition Party, and every other reform party, and moral 
suasion, and legal suasion, and every other kind of 
suasion. “But,” he went on to say, “the only real re- 
form is to get men converted and entirely sanctified. 
When a man has been regenerated and filled with the 
Holy Ghost, he will be right and do right. He will be 
174 


The Sharp, Two-Edged Sword. 

temperate; he will be chaste; he will be honest; he will 
be a good husband, a good father, a good citizen, a good 
alderman, a good mayor, a good legislator, a good presi- 
dent. When all men have been regenerated and entire- 
ly sanctified, this earth will be heaven. The more souls 
we can get converted and sanctified, the more the society 
of earth will resemble the society of heaven. The only 
true reformation is holiness. Henceforth, as never be- 
fore, my work shall be to get men and women converted 
and sanctified. I. give you fair notice: I shall not let 
up on you, I shall not stop preaching holiness, till every 
member of this Church is soundly converted and wholly 
sanctified and filled with the Holy Spirit, or till I am 
sent to some other field of labor. Every sermon I 
preach from this pulpit will be a holiness sermon, for 
holiness is all there is of the gospel. I shall preach upon 
repentance. But repentance is the threshold to holiness. 
I shall preach upon justification and regeneration. But 
they are only the vestibule of the temple of Holiness. I 
shall preach upon the adoption and assurance. But they 
are rooms in the same glorious building. I shall preach 
all the Christian graces. But they are only the fruit of 
the Spirit of holiness. I shall preach upon heaven. But 
heaven is nothing but the abode of those who are per- 
fected in holiness. I shall preach upon hell. But hell 
has no terrors, and no existence, except for those who are 
destitute of holiness. I shall preach upon the second 
coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. But the only reason 
for presenting that doctrine is that it is an incentive to 
the pursuit of that holiness, without which no man shall 
see the Lord. I shall preach upon the resurrection of 
the dead. But there is no resurrection worthy the name 
except for those who experienced Christian holiness be- 
175 


The Victories of Wesley Castle. 

fore they died . I shall preach for the purpose of com- 
forting those who are in mourning and sorrow. But the 
only comfort is that which is imparted to the soul by the 
Comforter, the Spirit of holiness. I shall preach upon 
Temperance. But there is no real temperance which is 
not a part of Christian holiness. I may preach a series 
of sermons on Bible characters and Bible history. But 
the Bible is nothing to use but a treatise on Holiness; 
that is the reason why we call it the Holy Bible. And 
so every sermon which I shall preach from this pulpit 
will be a holiness sermon. That is the only gospel 
preaching which I know. Those who do not like holi- 
ness preaching will do well to go to some other church, 
if there be a church where holiness is not preached, or 
stay at home.” 

There was a good deal of grumbling over that ser- 
mon. The Mayor of Dorchester was present. He told 
somebody, going home, that he did not believe in holi- 
ness ; and he uttered the word holiness with a sneer. The 
proprietor of the Sunday Telegram was at church that 
morning, while the newsboys were distributing his 
paper through the city. He said that he did not believe 
in holiness. Brother Davis, who sold the liquor which 
made Charlie Toor drive the knife through the heart 
of James Porter, was at church that morning. (This was 
before he fell from the ladder and broke his neck.) He 
almost always went to church Sunday morning. He was 
one of those Pharisees who could “devour widows’ 
houses, and for a pretence make long prayers.” He said 
that he did not believe in holiness. Brother Hobson, 
the whiskey-drinking class-leader, was at church that 
morning. From the house of God he went in through 
the back door of a neighboring saloon and got a drink 
176 


The Sharp, Two-Edged Sword. 

to fire him up for the class meeting. As he was wiping 
his lips, after the drink, he remarked that he did not be- 
lieve in holiness. Mrs. Small, a member of the Church, 
who gave a euchre party the week before, on prayer 
meeting night, said she did not believe in holiness. 
There were a great many others at church that morning, 
who found fault with the sermon and said they did not 
believe in holiness. They were worldly-minded, pleas- 
ure-loving, mammon-worshiping men and women, who 
belonged to the Church because it was the style, and 
who did not want any more religion than was absolutely 
necessary to get to heaven. But there were many others 
who were delighted with the sermon, and said they be- 
lieved in the kind of holiness their pastor preached, and 
thanked God they had such a preacher, and were re- 
solved to be just as holy as a holy and almighty God 
could make them. And so there was a division in the 
Church, according to the words of Jesus when he said : 
“I came not to send peace, but a sword.” 

It has been related how Wesley Castle’s first sermon 
at Dorchester put a large part of the congregation un- 
der conviction. Such was the effect of almost every 
sermon he preached. He was never personal (except 
when he preached upon “Who killed James Porter”). 
He was never harsh. He never scolded. He was always 
tender and melting. He was often tearful and pathetic. 
He always preached out of a heart full of love. And 
yet there was something in his preaching which cut sin- 
ners, in the Church and out of the Church, to the very 
bone. The word of God, in his mouth, was the sword of 
the Spirit, “quick and powerful, and sharper than any 
two-edged sword, piercing to the dividing asunder of 
soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow,” and was 
177 


The Victories of Wesley Castle. 

“a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.” 
He had much praise throughout the city for his ability 
as a pulpit orator; and yet, when strangers went out of 
the house, after hearing him for the first time, they were 
less likely to say “that was a great sermon, or what a 
great preacher that man is,” than to think “what a 
miserable sinner I am.” 

As the pastor of First Church kept pouring the truth 
upon the people in convicting power, the result was two- 
fold. Some resisted. They saw the light; but they 
would not walk in it. They knew what they ought to 
do; but they would not do it. They did not say “I 
won’t” to the Holy Spirit, and to conscience, at first. 
They hesitated; they halted between two opinions; they 
tried to beg off. But finally, as the truth kept coming in 
greater power, they came to a positive conclusion. They 
said : “I will not do what I know I ought to do.” Then 
they became very hard, and began to drift rapidly away 
from God. Then another thing took place. They came 
to dislike and hate the minister. At first they took no 
offence at him. They were so busy with themselves 
that they did not think much about him. But when 
they resisted the truth, and the truth kept coming, then 
they began to dislike the channel through which it came. 
Their dislike rapidly grew into positive hatred. Quite 
likely they would not have admitted that they hated 
that earnest, devoted, noble man, who preached the 
truth just because he loved them so. Perhaps they did 
not really know that they did hate him. But they did 
hate him; and for no other reason in the world except 
that he told them the truth. They hated him according to 
a universal law, as old as sin, that, when we resist the 
truth, and will not do what we know we ought, we 


The Sharp, Two-Edged Sword. 

hate the person who persists in telling us the truth. 
King Ahab, in describing to King Jehosaphat a certain 
preacher whom the latter wished to hear said : “I hate 
him; for he doth not prophesy good concerning me, but 
evil.” 

And so it came to pass that, within six months after 
the beginning of his pastorate at Dorchester, Wesley 
Castle was cordially disliked and hated by nearly half 
the members of his flock. He was all unconscious of the 
fact. He loved his people with all the intensity of his 
great, loving nature. He loved them enough to die for 
their salvation. He could not imagine that they could 
have any other feeling toward him. 

Chief among the enemies of the pastor were the 
mayor, druggist Davis and class-leader Hobson. These 
men, with many helpers, busied themselves in scatter- 
ing “firebrands, arrows and death” through the congre- 
gation. They talked the minister down, with all their 
might, and did all they could to destroy his influence in 
the church and in the city. 

But the larger portion of the congregation accepted 
the truth and walked in the light. Those who had al- 
ready received the Holy Ghost received large additions 
of grace and power, and waxed fat and strong through 
the abundant supplies of rich, juicy, spiritual food which 
were dealt out to them every Sabbath from the pulpit. 
Many earnest souls who had not hitherto understood 
their full privileges in Jesus Christ, but were walking in 
all the light they had, soon discovered what their birth- 
right was, and crossed over into the Canaan of perfect 
love without delay. Others, not so quick to learn, were 
nevertheless drinking in the truth, and were moving up 
toward the Jordan which divides the wilderness state 
179 


The Victories of Wesley Castle. 

from the land which flows with milk and honey. Many 
backsliders and worldly-minded professors saw the desert 
in which they were w T andering, and returned to their 
Father’s house. Others, not a few, who had been in the 
Church for years, doing Christian duty but having no 
joy, found out that they had never been converted, and 
went back to the beginning, and sought and found the 
pardon of their sins and the witness of the Spirit. 

The pastor appointed an inquiry meeting for every 
Friday afternoon and evening. Many scores, convicted 
by the Sunday preaching, came and found what their 
souls needed, under the wise instruction and uplifting 
prayers of the man of God. 

One of the first inquirers was one of the most prom- 
inent members of the Church, a lady who enjoyed, and 
deserved, the respect and esteem of all who knew her. 
As soon as she began to speak, she burst into tears and 
exclaimed : “I have belonged to the Church ever since 
I was fifteen years old ; but I have never been converted. 
The first sermon I heard you preach put me under con- 
viction. Many times, since I joined the Church, I have 
been dissatisfied with my experience, and have gone to 
my pastors for help ; but they have always put me ofi by 
telling me that I was all right. I have tried to believe 
that I was all right. But now I know that I am all 
wrong. I am nothing but a poor miserable sinner ; and 
I want to know what I must do to be saved.” That lady 
was the first of a large number of inquirers, in essential- 
ly the same spiritual condition. 

And so the work of God went on. First Church did 
not have, that year, what is usually called a revival. 
Not many sinners outside the Church were converted. 
But a large number of the members of the Church were 
180 


The Sharp, Two-Edged Sword. 

converted; a larger number of backsliders were re- 
claimed; a still larger number of believers received the 
baptism of the Holy Ghost; all sincere and honest per- 
sons who sat under the preaching were brought nearer 
to God; and the soil was prepared for a mighty harvest 
of souls in the not distant future. 

Here is a specimen of the work done that year, The 
pastor received this letter : 

Chicago, 111., June 10, 18 — . 

Reverend and Dear Sir, 

Though a total stranger, I venture to address you a few lines. I 
heard you preach, one week ago last Sunday morning. Your text 
was “ Be Filled with the Spirit.” When you announced it, I said 
to myself, there will be nothing for me in that sermon. There 
was nothing in it addressed directly to sinners (and I was a sinner 
of the deepest dye). It was wholly for Christians. But you set 
forth the privilege of Christians in such a beautiful light that I 
said to myself, if I could be such a Christian as that, I would be a 
Christian. I went out of the church powerfully convicted of sin. 
I did not sleep that night. I had no peace for several days. But 
I have found peace in Jesus Christ. I know I am saved. I could 
not help writing to tell you about it. I am a commercial traveler. 
I travel all over the United States. I have heard all the great 
preachers. But that was the first sermon that ever really went to 
my heart. I may call upon you, with your consent, the next time 
I visit Dorchester. I am determined to go on and get the fullness 
of the Spirit. I cannot rest satisfied till I know I am cleansed 
from all unrighteousness. Pray for me. 

Yours with great respect, 

Thomas Scofield. 

In the month of September a District Conference was 
held in Dorchester, at the Madison Street Church. Wes- 
ley Castle was appointed to prepare and read a paper 
upon the subject: “Has the Methodist Church lost 
its Evangelistic Power? If so, why?” The essayist 

181 


The Victories of Wesley Castle. 

answered the first question in the affirmative. He as- 
serted that Methodism was not the evangelist force it 
once was, or that it ought to be. The second question, 
“Why?” he answered, substantially, in these words: 
“The Methodist Church does not have the great revivals 
she used to have, and is not the mighty soul-winning 
power she used to have, chiefly because Bishops, Presid- 
ing Elders and pastors have so largely left off preaching 
the doctrine of Entire Sanctification. John Wesley de- 
clared that that was the great depositum of Methodism; 
and that God had raised up the Methodists chiefly to 
proclaim that truth. Now hardly one of our ministers 
in twenty ever says a word upon that subject, except to 
ridicule what Paul and Wesley taught.” 

In the course of his paper Mr. Castle made the fol- 
lowing quotations from Wesley: 

“Where Christian perfection is not strongly and ex- 
plicitly preached, there is seldom any remarkable bless- 
ing of God. Till you press believers to expect full sal- 
vation now, you must not look for any revival.” 

“This I always observe — where a work of sanctifica- 
tion breaks out, the whole work of God prospers. Some 
are convinced of sin, other justified and all stirred up to 
greater earnestness for salvation.” 

“The more explicitly and strongly you press all be- 
lievers to aspire after full sanctification, as attainable 
now by simple faith, the more the whole work of God 
will prosper.” 

Meanwhile the Mayor and Brother Hobson were lay- 
ing pipes and pulling wires to get rid of pastor Castle 
at the end of the year. Druggist Davis would have been 
with them in their labors, only he had gone into etern- 
ity, to settle with the Supreme Judge for the murder of 
182 


The Sharp, Two-Edged Sword. 

James Porter and for his other sins. These haters of 
holiness and of everything good canvassed the whole 
congregation, and got as many as they could to say that 
they thought it would be better to have a change of 
pastor. 

When the fourth Quarterly Conference came they 
were all ready to spring their trap. After the regular 
business had been transacted the pastor retired, and the 
conversation began. The Mayor was the leading speak- 
er on his side. Of course he had nothing personal 
against the pastor. He was a good man and meant all 
right. He was an able preacher too; but he was not 
adapted to that place. He had been around through the 
Church and congregation, and had found that a large 
majority, especially of the paying members, wanted a 
change. When the Presiding Elder asked what was the 
matter, why the people wanted a change, he got this 
answer: “He preaches holiness all the time, and is 
dividing the Church.” Then the Mayor played his last 
card. He declared that, if Elder Castle returned, full 
half the Church would leave; the salary and other ex- 
penses could not be met; and the Church would go to 
pieces. The Presiding Elder (it was not Dr. Bateman; 
his term of office expired at the last session of the an- 
nual conference) asked the Mayor if he intended to with- 
hold his support in case the present pastor returned. 
He tried to avoid giving a definite answer. Finally, 
when he was pressed to the wall, he said that, if Elder 
Castle came back, he should leave. “Well,” said the 
Presiding Elder, “if you will not stand by your minister 
whom the Bishop sends, whoever he may be, you have 
no right to say anything about the question now before 
us; and we will not have another word from you.” 

183 


The Victories of Wesley Castle. 

Then Brothers Weston, and Reynolds, and Rossiter, 
and others had their say. They told the Presiding Elder 
that the past year had been the best in the history of the 
Church, for many years, in every way; that they could 
see a great revival in the near future, if the present ad- 
ministration should be continued; and that, if necessary, 
they would see all the expenses of the Church met, with- 
out a cent from the Mayor, or Brother Hobson, or any 
of the kickers. 

When the vote was taken a large majority were in 
favor of the reappointment of Wesley Castle to First 
Church, Dorchester. 



184 


X. 


The Wingless Victory. 

Two committees went from First Church, Dorchester, 
to the Annual Conference at Centerville. One commit- 
tee was sent by the Quarterly Conference to secure the 
reappointment of the Rev. Wesley Castle. The other 
was a self-appointed committee, bent on getting rid of 
the pastor who was. This last named body secured an 
interview with the Bishop early in the conference ses- 
sion. They were the Mayor of Dorchester, the editor 
and proprietor of the Sunday Telegram and Class-leader 
Hobson. 

“Well, Brethren,” said the Bishop, “what can I do 
for you ?” 

“Bishop,” answered the Mayor, who had been selected 
as spokesman, “we came to ask you to give us a new min- 
ister at First Church, Dorchester. We have a member- 
ship of over six hundred and pay a salary of twenty-five 
hundred dollars, with the use of an elegant parsonage, 
and are the leading church in the conference. Our pres- 
ent pastor has been with us one year. He is a good man, 
and, in some places, he would do a great deal of good; 
but he is not adapted to our place.” 

“Are you a committee appointed by the Quarterly 
Conference ?” asked the Bishop. 

“Ho,” said the Mayor; “but we represent nearly all 
the wealth and intelligence and social influence of the 
Church; and we know what the Church wants. We 
must have a change.” 


185 


The Victories of Wesley Castle. 

“But what is the matter with your present pastor? 
Why do you want a change?” asked the Bishop. 

“O,” said the chairman of the committee, “he has 
divided the Church. If he comes back, half the Church 
will leave, and, if he stays long enough, he will kill the 
Church entirely.” 

“How has he divided the Church?” asked the Bishop. 

“By preaching holiness,” said the Mayor. 

“Divided the Church by preaching holiness ? I don’t 
see how preaching holiness could divide a Church. We 
are all commanded to be holy, and to follow holiness, 
without which no man shall see the Lord; and I can’t 
understand how preaching that without which no man 
can see the Lord can divide a church. It is the nature of 
holiness to unite all the people of God, and make them 
love each other. You must be mistaken. If holiness 
would divide a church, I should think it w r ould divide 
heaven. Did you ever hear that they had a division in 
heaven because there was too much holiness there ? You 
must be mistaken. If your Church is divided, it was not 
holiness that did it ; but the absence of holiness.” 

“The Mayor is right, Bishop,” spoke up the proprietor 
of the Sunday Telegram. “Elder Castle preaches noth- 
ing but holiness; and he has divided the Church. If he 
comes back, we can’t support him. The people who have 
the money will all leave, and he can’t get his salary. I 
shouldn’t think he would want to come back. It would 
be a kindness to him to send him somewhere else.” 

“But,” said the Bishop, “if I take Brother Castle 
away, I shall do my best to send you a good holiness 
preacher in his place. We do not intend to have any 
preachers in the conference who are not holy men. 
Every man who joins Conference is obliged to say pub- 
186 


The Wingless Victory. 

licly, before all his brethren, that he believes in holiness, 
entire sanctification, perfect love. It is the duty of every 
Methodist preacher to preach holiness. Every intelli- 
gent, loyal Methodist preacher does preach holiness. 
Why, Brethren, you do not seem to know what Metho- 
dism is. Did you ever hear that the special mission of 
Methodism is to Spread Scriptural holiness over all these 
lands ?’ Do you not know that our great founder, J ohn 
Wesley, declared that what you call holiness, entire 
sanctification, perfect love, is ‘the grand depositum 
which God has lodged with the people called Methodists, 
and for the sake of propagating this chiefly he appears to 
have raised us up V Now, Brethren, do you tell me that 
preaching the great distinctive doctrine of Methodism 
divides a Methodist church ? If preaching holiness 
divides your church, it must be that it ought to be 
divided.” 

The Bishop paused; and the three members of the 
committee looked at him, and at each other, in dumb 
amazement and confusion. 

The Bishop went on : “Let me suppose a case. It is 
not the case of your church. Do not think I am personal. 
Suppose there were a church which numbered among its 
members a lot of brewers and distillers and saloon-keep- 
ers and wine and whiskey-bibbers. There are such 
churches, though, I trust, none of our denomination. 
Now suppose the pastor of that church should preach 
total abstinence and the annihilation of the saloon, as 
all Methodist preachers are required to do, and delight 
to do. What would be the result ? If he kept on preach- 
ing that way, and preached as though he meant what he 
said, don’t you suppose he would offend the brewers and 
distillers and saloonists and wine-bibbers? Don’t you 
187 


The Victories of Wesley Castle. 

suppose they would leave the church, if the minister 
didn’t stop that kind of preaching? And wouldn’t that 
be dividing the church? And wouldn’t the friends of 
whiskey say that the minister had divided the church by 
preaching temperance? If such a division should take 
place, who would be to blame — the pastor, who preached 
temperance, or the enemies of temperance who would 
not endure the truth ? If a lot of brewers and distillers 
and liquor dealers should ask me to remove their pastor 
because he divided the church by preaching temperance, 
would you think that I ought to do so ?” 

The committee made no reply, and the Bishop went 
on : “I am quite sure that you would say that, if preach- 
ing total abstinence from alcoholic beverages and the 
total abolition of that great curse, the American saloon, 
would divide a church by repelling the saloon and 
whiskey element of the congregation, that church ought 
to be so divided, and the sooner the better. Jesus Christ 
came to make a division among men. He came to separ- 
ate a people out from the world, whose motto, and whose 
life, should be ‘Holiness unto the Lord.’ If preaching 
the real holiness, in the right spirit, by a holy man, 
divides your church, then it ought to be divided, and the 
sooner the better; and when it is thus divided, it will be 
all the stronger and more prosperous.” 

The Bishop paused, and looked in the eyes of the com- 
mittee. As they had nothing to say, he went on again : 
“I think I understand the case of your Church. You 
have a lot of people among you who do not love the 
prayer meeting and the class-meeting, who have no fam- 
ily altar, who hanker after the theater and the ball-room, 
who are worldly, who never do any spiritual work in the 
Church, who belong to the Church chiefly for its social 
188 


The Wingless Victory. 

benefits and because they think religion is a good thing 
to have in the dying hour. Am I not right ?” The 
Bishop glanced around the circle, and they all nodded 
assent. 

“Now are not these the ones, chiefly, who complain 
because the pastor preaches holiness ?” Again the Mayor 
and the editor and the class-leader nodded their heads; 
and the Bishop proceeded : “There may be some others 
who do not like holiness preaching, some who attend 
prayer meeting and try to be religious. But they are 
ignorant, or prejudiced, or stuck fast in an old rut, or 
have something in their lives which will not bear the 
light. All who really want to be right with God like 
holiness preaching. Now if Brother Castle stays with 
you, and keeps right on preaching holiness — that is 
preaching the gospel; for that is all it is — the kickers will 
either get converted and get right with God, or they will 
get out of the Church entirely. If the former does not 
take place — if they won’t get right with God — the 
sooner they leave the Church the better. Then, I will 
tell you what will happen. When you and those whom 
you represent get right with God, or get out of the 
Church, your Church and your city will be visited by the 
greatest revival you ever heard of.” 

The Bishop paused to take breath. His visitors were 
as white in the face as a sheet. Then he looked the 
Mayor in the face and said: “Brother, do you attend 
prayer meeting, and take part ? Do you go to class-meet- 
ing ? Do you have family prayers ? Do you observe the 
rule of the Discipline which forbids dancing and theater- 
going and things of that sort?” The Mayor shook his 
head. 


189 


The Victories of Wesley Castle. 

“How is it with you ?” said the venerable President of 
the Conference to the proprietor of the Sunday Tele- 
gram. That worthy gave the same answer as the Mayor. 

“You publish a Sunday newspaper, I understand. Is 
that true V ’ 

The man blushed with shame, and did not deny the 
charge. 

Turning to the third member of the committee, the 
Bishop said: “You are a class-leader. Of course you 
go to class-meeting; but are you right with God in other 
respects?” The Bishop looked into the man’s eyes as 
though he could see into the very depths of his inner- 
most soul. The All-seeing One did give him power to 
read the man’s character, and he knew that he was a 
double-dyed hypocrite. The whiskey-drinking class- 
leader quailed and writhed under the searching gaze of 
those clear, gray eyes. 

“Brethren,” said the Bishop, “I must leave you. The 
Presiding Elders are waiting for me in the cabinet-room. 
I have only this more to say to you, I do not wonder that 
you do not like holiness preaching, though what you hate 
is not entire sanctification, as you imagine, but only justi- 
fication. You hate all real religion. My advice to you is 
to put yourselves under the tuition of your noble pastor 
and the Holy Spirit and let them lead you into the enjoy- 
ment of salvation. Then you will be perfectly delighted 
with what you so much dislike now. Tell those who sent 
you, when they send another committee to me, to talk 
about the appointment of a pastor, to select men who 
have family prayers, and go to prayer meeting, and en- 
joy religion. Unless I hear something entirely different 
from what you have told me, Brother Castle will be your 
pastor next year. Your complaint against him is the 
190 


The Wingless Victory. 

very best of recommendations. I sincerely hope that, 
when we meet again, you will be in such an improved 
spiritual condition that you will like holiness preaching. 
Good afternoon, Brethren;” and the Bishop bowed the 
machine politician and the editor of the Sunday news- 
paper and the whiskey-drinking class-leader out of the 
house. 

While he was at conference, Wesley Castle received 
the following letter : 

Mount Caesar College, October 10, 18 — . 

Rev. Wesley Castle. 

Dear Sir : — It is my pleasant duty to inform you that, on the 
unanimous recommendation of the Faculty of the Institution, the 
Trustees of Mount Caesar College have conferred upon you the 
degrees of Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts. The diplomas 
have been forwarded to you by express. The Trustees and Faculty 
deeply regret the injustice which was done you at the end of your 
college course, six years ago. It grew out of a misunderstanding 
and misrepresentation, for which an individual was responsible 
who is no longer connected with the Institution. It is hoped that 
you will accept this as a sufficient apology. 

I also do myself the honor to inform you that you have been 
unanimously elected to the chair of Greek Language and Litera- 
ture in Mount Caesar College, at an annual salary of three thousand 
dollars. Please inform me immediately of your acceptance ; also 
state how soon you can enter upon the work of your professor- 
ship. The chair is now vacant, and it is hoped that you can come 
to it at once. In closing, permit me to say that all your friends at 
Mount Caesar (and the number is very large) are happy in the 
thought that the sad estrangement and separation of the past is so 
soon to end in joyful reunion and fellowship. 

Most respectfully yours, 

Milton Childs, 

Secretary of the Board of Trustees, 
Mount Caesar College. 


191 


The Victories of Wesley Castle. 

There was a most powerful temptation to the young 
minister. To be in such a position as that had been the 
ambition of his life. His natural adaptations were all in 
that direction. The ministry was a hard and discourag- 
ing calling. He had tried it three years, in utter aband- 
onment of self and the world, and had met with little 
but opposition and persecution. Twice he had barely 
escaped being murdered. How he had a chance to get 
away from all perils and hardships, in a position which 
would bring him ease and comfort and honor for the rest 
of his life. He did not know what to do. In his per- 
plexity he did two very wise things. He sent two tele- 
grams. One was to Heaven, for divine direction ; the 
other was to his wife, to come immediately to the seat of 
Conference. 

Mrs. Castle read the letter and handed it back to her 
husband. “Wesley, what are you going to do ?” 

“Mary, what shall I do? I want to do the will of 
God. Perhaps he wants me to go to Mount Caesar. 
Perhaps I can do more good there than in the pastorate. 
I shall be a minister still, and shall have abundant oppor- 
tunities to preach. I shall be able to lead a multitude 
of students to Christ, and into the enjoyment of the ful- 
ness of the Holy Ghost.” 

“That is what I think, Wesley. And then you will 
get away from the bitter opposition and persecution 
which you have suffered ever since you went into the 
ministry. You will have to preach holiness as long as 
you do preach, and that will expose you to persecution 
everywhere. It is an unpopular doctrine, and the 
churches will not stand it. Then, at the very best, we 
shall be moving all the time, and shall never have a set- 
tled home. When you begin to be old, no church will 
192 


The Wingless Victory. 

want you, and you will be a stranded old Superannuate. 
As a professor of Greek, you can do good work till you 
are eighty. What is the use of enduring all the abuse 
you are sure to get, in the pastorate, beside the risk of 
being killed outright, when you can have an easy time 
at Mount Caesar, and do just as much good beside? 
You told me, coming up from the station, that we have 
got to stay at Dorchester. You know what that means. 
Half the Church hate you bad enough to murder you; 
they will murder you by inches. You know you can’t 
do anything there, the opposition is so great. I feel like 
shaking off the dust of my feet against First Church. 
They have treated you shabbily. I vote for going to 
Mount Caesar.” 

“Well, wife, said the perplexed and tempted minister, 
“we will not settle it now. We will wait on the Lord to- 
day; and I will answer the letter to-morrow.” 

That night Wesley Castle had an answer to the tele- 
gram which he had sent to Heaven. It was two passages 
of Scripture, which were so impressed upon his mind that 
he knew that they were the voice of the Holy Spirit, 
speaking to him. He was almost as sure as he was of 
his own existence. The Scriptures were these : “Blessed 
are they which are persecuted for righteousness’ sake : 
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven,” and “Ho man, hav- 
ing put his hand to the plough, and looking back is fit 
for the kingdom of God.” 

Mary Castle had a message too. It was this : “Here 
have we no continuing city, but we seek one to come.” 

The question was settled. It was a great disappoint- 
ment to the flesh. But the inmost soul of Wesley Castle, 
and of Mary, his wife, was filled with peace and joy. 
Faith had won another victory. 

193 


The Victories of Wesley Castle. 

When the Castles, returning from Conference, stepped 
off the cars at the Union Station in Dorchester, they were 
met by Brother Weston and Brother Reynolds and hur- 
ried away, in a carriage, to the church. There they 
found a crowd of people, assembled to give them a royal 
reception. It seemed as though the whole city was there. 
Half of the First Church were present, and large dele- 
gations from all the other Methodist churches, and repre- 
sentatives of all the other Protestant churches, and prom- 
inent citizens who belonged to no church. Addresses of 
welcome were given; the warmest expressions of in- 
dividual admiration and affection were showered upon 
the returning pastor and his wife; a sumptuous banquet 
was enjoyed by nearly a thousand persons ; and the hands 
of the honored guests were shaken till hands were sore 
and shoulders lame. Everybody said that Dorchester 
had never witnessed anything which could compare with 
the reception tendered Rev. and Mrs. Castle. 

Amid the joy of that evening Wesley Castle felt a 
sickening sensation in his soul. He saw that he was 
pastor of a divided church. While hundreds of First 
Church people were present, other hundreds were con- 
spicuous by their absence. The Mayor, and the pro- 
prietor of the Sunday Telegram, and Brother Hobson, 
and all that tribe were somewhere else that night. 

There was a different kind of a reception, at the par- 
sonage, the next day. The other sort of people began to 
come about nine o’clock in the morning. The first was 
the Mayor. He had very little to say. His face looked 
like a thunder cloud. He asked for his church letter, 
almost as soon as he sat down in the proffered chair. 
The pastor wrote it for him with all possible dispatch, 
only delaying to ask him to what church he wished to be 
194 


The Wingless Victory. 

commended. The Mayor was surprised by the question, 
supposing as many Methodists do, that he could carry the 
letter in his pocket till there was a new minister whom he 
liked, and then return it to the same church from which 
it was received. He refused at first to name any 
church. But, when he found that he would get no let- 
ter, if he did not, he said : “Madison Street Methodist 
Church.” 

When the Mayor left the parsonage, without a “good- 
morning” on his lips, there were five other persons com- 
ing up the walk after church letters. The pastor did 
nothing but write church letters all that day. His blanks 
gave out before ten o’clock. After that he was obliged 
to write out every letter in full. So he called his wife to 
his assistance. Later he sent down to the office of Ross- 
iter and Reynolds and borrowed a writing-machine and 
a young lady operator. And so he managed to get 
through the biggest day’s work, probably, of that kind, 
that any minister ever had to perform. When the last 
applicant had departed, at six o’clock, he had given two 
hundred and ninety-eight letters, and there were three 
hundred and fifty names remaining on the church reg- 
ister. After going carefully through the list, he said to 
his wife : “Mary, every one of the kickers has left, so 
far as I know them, except Brother Hobson. When he 
takes his letter, I shall be pastor of a united church.” 

Just then Brothers Rossiter, Reynolds and Weston, 
and their wives, came in. When the pastor repeated 
what he had just told his wife, Brother Reynolds clapped 
his hands and shouted “Hallelujah! praise the Lord! 
How we can do something. How we shall have the 
mightiest revival this city ever knew.” 

195 


The Victories of Wesley Castle. 

With Chester Reynolds fully agreed all the other 
visitors. That informal meeting lasted till eleven o’clock. 
Others, of like spirit came in. They had prayer. They 
took counsel of God and each other concerning the work 
before them. Their hearts were melted into one as 
never before. When they separated the brethren as- 
sured the pastor that they would stand by him to the 
end, with the last ounce of their influence and the last 
dollar of their money, declaring, at the same time, that 
they were most heartily glad that the kickers had gone. 

When Wesley Castle went to bed that night he was 
too happy to sleep. He had victory in his soul. He 
knew that God was about to visit Dorchester in mighty 
power. 

The story of the great revival at Dorchester, if fully 
written, would fill volumes. It began with, what is sel- 
dom seen, a perfectly united Church. The whiskey- 
drinking class-leader having withdrawn, under threat of 
expulsion, “they were all with one accord in one place.” 

What methods were employed? There were no par- 
ticular methods. Methods are of little account when the 
Holy Ghost is the revivalist, as he was at Dorchester. 

From the middle of October till the end of December 
the pastor’s work was chiefly to get his whole Church 
into the enjoyment of the blessing which the disciples 
received on the day of Pentecost, and to get those already 
in that experience up onto higher plains of holiness and 
power. To all his preaching on that subject there was 
not one murmur of dissent from a member of his flock. 
All drank in the word with the greatest eagerness. What 
joy it was to preach to such a congregation ! He also 
established a Sunday afternoon “holiness” meeting at 
the Y. M. C. A. Hall for the benefit of the members of 
196 


The Wingless Victory. 

other churches; and many Presbyterians, Baptists, Con- 
gregationalists, Episcopalians and Lutherans, as well as 
Methodists, attended, and became acquainted with the 
“Other Comforter,” whom Jesus had promised to send, 
but of whom they had hitherto heard nothing, to any 
purpose. 

The pastor made an earnest effort to get the whole 
Church together on the last night of the old year. A 
“watch meeting” was appointed. Out of an entire mem- 
bership of three hundred and fifty, three hundred and 
twenty-five were present. The pastor talked to them 
about the expected revival. He described the revival he 
hoped to see — hundreds and thousands born again by the 
Holy Ghost; drunkards and gamblers reformed from 
within, so as to stay reformed; saloons closed for lack of 
custom, and banished by righteous public sentiment; 
Sunday newspapers and Sunday trolley-cars suppressed 
by loss of patronage ; the city government reformed and 
purified; brotherly love established between capital and 
labor; and the whole town filled with peace and purity 
and joy. 

How did the pastor tell his people such a revival was 
to be secured ? Did he ask them to pledge themselves to 
do, in every thing, just as they thought J esus would do 
in the same circumstances? Ho. He knew that that 
would amount to nothing, because they could not do as 
Jesus would, in their own wisdom and strength. Did he 
assign work to every one, and make them promise that 
they would go and do it? Ho. He knew that they could 
accomplish nothing, unless God wrought in them might- 
ily by his Spirit; and that, if God so wrought, no direc- 
tion, on his part, and no pledge on theirs, would be 
needed. 


197 


The Victories of Wesley Castle. 

What did the pastor say? In substance, this: “If 
you will all seek, and obtain, what the one hundred and 
twenty received on the fiftieth day after the resurrection 
of our Lord, the revival, which I have described, will cer- 
tainly come.” That thought he elaborated and illus- 
trated and enforced till all understood, and till all were 
crying mightily to God for the fulfillment of the prom- 
ise : “I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh.” 

It ought not to excite the surprise of any one, who be- 
lieves the Bible, to say that “the promise of the Father” 
was fulfilled, that night, to every one of the chosen three 
hundred and twenty-five. There were no visible tongues 
of fire. There was no sound of a mighty rushing wind. 
But “they were all filled with the Holy Ghost,” and, 
from that hour “began to speak with other tongues, as 
the Spirit gave them utterance.” 

The next day the revival had come. One hundred 
souls sought God at the altar of the church, with tears 
and sobs of penitential grief, and were gloriously con- 
verted . Night after night, the following week, the house 
was crowded to its utmost capacity. Before the second 
Sabbath dawned five hundred sinners had professed sav- 
ing faith in Jesus Christ. It all came about through the 
simple preaching of the gospel, and prayer, and the sing- 
ing of old-fashioned hymns, and personal work per- 
formed, without urging or special appointment, by those 
whom the indwelling Spirit thrust out into the golden 
harvest field, where the Spirit himself had already 
wrought powerful conviction in the hearts of all classes 
of persons. 

The second week the meetings were held in the Opera 
House, where three thousand persons could comfortably 
sit; and the four Methodist Churches and their pastors 
198 


The Wingless Victory. 

united in the work. At the end of the third week there 
had been counted one thousand professed conversions. 
All the converts were pressed to go forward and receive 
the baptism of the Holy Ghost, like Philip’s converts at 
Samaria, and most of them did experience that second 
blessing, within a few days after their conversion. Thus 
surcharged with divine love and power they scattered the 
holy fire all over the city, like Samson’s foxes in the 
standing corn of the Philistines. 

Nearly all the other Protestant churches soon burst 
into revival flames. Sparks fell even upon the Eoman 
Catholic churches. After many scores of their members 
had been converted, the priests held “missions” (their 
name for revivals) in all their congregations. And so 
the conflagration became universal. 

All sorts of persons were converted — the poor and the 
rich, the low and the high, the vile and the moral, the 
ignorant and the educated, the intemperate and the 
sober, the licentious and the chaste, day-laborers and 
millionaires, dwellers in the slums and owners of marble 
mansions, blatant infidels and those who had always be- 
lieved in the reality of religion. A great army of young 
men were converted; and, filled with the Spirit, they or- 
ganized themselves into companies and squads to capture 
every other young man in the city. Commercial travel- 
ers, and strangers stopping in the city for a night, found 
Christ and carried the holy contagion into distant towns 
and states. The very atmosphere of Dorchester seemed 
to be charged with a kind of divine ozone, which affected 
every one who lived there, or who came to spend a night 
or a single hour. 

The saloons were almost deserted; and most of them 
were entirely closed, either because their patrons were 

199 


The Victories of Wesley Castle. 

gone, or because their owners were converted. Nearly 
all the hotels threw out their bars, and turned their bar- 
rooms into places of prayer. When the whistles on the 
great mills and shops sounded the noon hour, almost the 
whole city went to prayer, in the churches, and factories, 
and stores, and offices, and hotels, and homes. Every- 
where the people were singing gospel songs. The police- 
men had nothing to do, and left their beats and went to 
church. Theatrical companies and minstrel troupes and 
show-men of every kind avoided Dorchester, as though 
it had the plague, because they could not get a house. 
The human buzzards and hyenas, who had become so 
vile that they would not yield to God, fled the town, as 
birds forsake a burning forest. On Sunday the streets 
were deserted except as they were thronged with wor- 
shipers going to church, or returning home. Sunday 
street-cars ceased to run. Sunday newspapers ceased to 
be hawked about the streets. An immense petition was 
presented to the railroad companies not to allow any 
trains to stop at Dorchester on Sunday; and to the Post- 
master General at Washington not to allow the postoffice 
to be opened on the first day of the week. It seemed as 
though everybody in Dorchester had turned to the Lord. 

The happiest person in all the city was the chief 
human instrument of this marvelous revolution. The 
pastor of the First Methodist Episcopal Church was 
filled with unspeakable joy. O how glad he was that he 
did not accept the proffered professorship at Mount 
Caesar College. And yet he was never farther from 
being puffed up with pride. He worked in loving har- 
mony with his brother pastors of all churches, their ac- 
knowledged leader, but not their over-lord or critic. The 
foul demons of bigotry and proselytism did not show 
200 


The Wingless Victory. 

their hateful heads. Wesley Castle had the joy of seeing 
most of the kickers, who had left his Church, returning 
to the fold, soundly converted and baptized with the 
Holy Ghost. Among them was the Mayor, who became 
as earnest a worker for Jesus Christ as he had been for 
the political party to which he belonged. The whiskey- 
drinking hypocritical class-leader never repented, but 
suddenly died in the midst of the revival. 

It was found necessary to make special provision for 
the spiritual welfare of the people living in the factory 
and tenement portion of the city. Under the lead of 
Chester Reynolds and his father-in-law, an immense 
wigwam was erected on a vacant lot loaned by one of the 
factory corporations. Carter, the Cow-boy Evangelist, 
who had come East, for a visit, drawn by the world-wide 
fame of the Dorchester revival, was induced to take 
charge of the wigwam work for a few weeks. His labors 
were blessed in the conversion of hundreds of souls and 
the complete transformation of that whole district. Be- 
hold the power of the gospel! Castle and Carter were 
true yoke-fellows, spiritual athletes, laboring together 
with all the love of David and Jonathan. 

******* 

The revival at Dorchester was a real work of divine 
grace. There was no harmful reaction. It was deep and 
permanent. It added two thousand members to the 
churches, besides hundreds, already members, whom it 
brought to Christ. It filled the churches with life and 
fire. It closed the saloons, so that, though five years 
have elapsed, they have never been opened. It purified 
the politics of the city. At the next charter election, 
after* the revival, a live Christion man was elected 
Mayor; and all the out-going aldermen were replaced 
201 


The Victories of Wesley Castle. 

with Christian men. To-day there is not an officer in the 
city government of Dorchester who is not intelligent 
enough to discharge the duties of his office, and good 
enough to preach the gospel. The problem of municipal 
government has been fully solved at Dorchester; and 
committees from scores of other cities, on both sides of 
the ocean, have visited her to learn how she does it. Of 
all the cities in the civilized world, of her size, her tax 
rate is the lowest, the next higher being twice as high. 
No street-car ever stirs in Dorchester on Sunday. No 
newspaper can be sold on the streets of Dorchester on 
Sunday. Her police court rarely has a case of any kind. 
There has not been the slightest ripple of difficulty be- 
tween employer and employee, in Dorchester, since the 
great revival. The utmost good will exists between the 
two classes. They are no longer two classes. They are 
one class, because they are nearly all the disciples of one 
Master, Jesus Christ. Wages are one half higher in 
Dorchester than anywhere else, for the same kind of 
work. Nearly all the factories and mills have taken their 
operatives into co-partnership; and they share in the 
profits of the concern. There is not a labor union in the 
city, nor a combination of capitalists. The employers 
and the employees both say: “We have no need of or- 
ganizations. We are brethren. What is good for one is 
good for all.” The only law and arbiter between capi- 
talist and laborer is the “Golden Rule,” given by him 
who is the Supreme Capitalist and the Great Master 
Workman. 

Christ rules in Dorchester, because he rules, through 
the Holy Ghost, in the hearts of a vast majority of the 
people. Dorchester has been reformed, from within, by 
the indwelling and inworking Spirit of God; not, from 
202 


The Wingless Victory. 

without, by human wisdom and man-made devises. 
When will reformers learn that the only way to really 
reform society is to reform its individual members by the 
regenerating and sanctifying power of the Holy Ghost? 
******** 

Wesley Castle was deluged with letters from all over 
the Christian world, asking about the great revival in 
Dorchester, and how it was brought to pass. He had 
many invitations to visit England, to address synods and 
conventions and congregations on that fascinating topic. 
He resolved to cross the sea. He needed a change. He 
believed God wanted to use him over there to promote 
his work. He invited Carter to go with him. Mrs. Cas- 
tle would not be left behind. 

The day of departure had arrived. Almost the whole 
city turned out to bid the travelers “good by.” All the 
pastors were present, in a body, including the Catholic 
priests. Without any shadow of arrogance or sectarian- 
ism on his part, or of jealousy or suspicion on theirs, they 
looked upon Wesley Castle as their spiritual father. 

The last hand-shakes had been exchanged. The three 
travelers stood on the rear platform of the last car, wav- 
ing unuttered and unutterable farewells to their thou- 
sands of admirers and friends. As the train slowly 
started for tbe great city, where the ship was waiting to 
bear them across the sea, the crowd struck up a hymn, 
and the band joined in : 

“ God be with you till we meet again.” 

Those who stood nearest, caught the last words of 
Wesley Castle : “Not by might, nor by power, 
but by my Spirit, saith the Lord of hosts.” 


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